Greg Burel, the former Director of the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), shared an article on LinkedIn that the SNS needs to be more than just supplies on shelves (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6742802262206246914/). To further this point, much of the supplies contained within SNS that was distributed to states early in the COVID-19 pandemic were beyond their use-by date and in many cases unusable. The system needs to have a robust supply chain with regional manufacturing available in order to answer the call when the healthcare system is challenged.
Frontline had a scathing documentary on the state of the US supply chain for PPE that was released on October 6, 2020 (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/americas-medical-supply-crisis/). Part of the documentary covered the loss of domestic manufacturing of PPE. This is a national security problem. If the manufacture and supply chain is inadequate to support frontline healthcare workers, there will be a catastrophic impact on our delivery of healthcare services. This fact was made abundantly clear during the first half of the response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States. Facilities across the country had to depend of crisis contingencies for PPE use, that in other times would be unheard of to put into practice.
Because of shortfalls in PPE supplies through all aspects of healthcare delivery in the US, critical healthcare workers were exposed to higher than acceptable levels of transmission risk from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The US needs to close these infection control gaps caused by inadequate PPE supplies in order to get our country to the downward slope of the daily case counts, and begin to get to a new normal in our society.
Looking forward to discussions on this topic. Please follow my blog and contribute comments to my posts. I don't have all of the answers. However, open and honest discussions will bring us closer to answers to these challenges. Thank you for stopping by.
