What number of medical provides does the US have left to combat the coronavirus? FEMA can’t say.

Federal Emergency Administration Company (FEMA) administrator Peter Gaynor struggled Sunday to element what number of masks and different items of non-public safety gear (PPE) the federal authorities has stockpiled — and the way a lot of this stockpile has been despatched to well being care suppliers coping with the coronavirus.

The Trump administration has confronted questions on its function in coordinating the distribution of protecting gear in current weeks as well being care employees and state officers have turn out to be more and more vocal a couple of extreme scarcity of masks and different types of PPE that enable them to conduct coronavirus checks, deal with contaminated sufferers, and reduce publicity danger for sufferers searching for non-coronavirus-related remedy.

Sunday, Gaynor appeared on a number of speak reveals; on every, he was requested about what FEMA — which has been tasked with PPE distribution — is doing concerning the scarcity. And in every look, he refused to share particulars of his company’s response.

When CNN’s Jake Tapper requested Gaynor for an estimate of the variety of masks the Trump administration has purchased, and what number of of that quantity have been distributed to suppliers, Gaynor mentioned, “I can’t provide you with a tough quantity.”

The administrator added, “I can inform you that it’s taking place each day. And my mission is operational coordination of all of this stuff. And that’s my focus.”

As coronavirus has unfold throughout the globe, there’s been a worldwide scarcity of the private safety gear obligatory for well being care employees to remain protected from the virus. The US — which recognized its first coronavirus affected person on the finish of February and has greater than 32,000 confirmed circumstances as of March 22 — has such a scarcity of wanted medical provides that the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) is already suggesting employees resort to home made masks.

Wednesday, President Donald Trump invoked the Protection Manufacturing Act, which permits the administration to direct non-public producers to make provides in a time of want in an effort to assist alleviate this scarcity.

However regardless of Trump claiming he’s put the act into “gear” to ask non-public producers to start making these wanted provides — from masks to ventilators — it isn’t clear that that is really the case. When requested whether or not the administration has directed firms to create provides, Gaynor instructed Tapper, “We haven’t but.”

Gaynor was much less definitive about when the provides he mentioned FEMA has shall be extra obtainable — and when present PPE inventory shall be replenished. He instructed NBC’s Chuck Todd on Meet the Press that “there are manufacturing traces developing and working” to assist produce extra private safety gear, however that these traces can solely accomplish that a lot.

“Once more these are finite, restricted assets,” Gaynor mentioned. “Will we ever have sufficient? I’m unsure. However our purpose is to ensure we get these important assets to the locations that want them essentially the most.”

FEMA was solely lately built-in into the Trump administration’s coronavirus activity pressure, which is being led by Vice President Mike Pence; Thursday it was introduced the company would coordinate your complete federal Covid-19 response.

The administration has confronted a lot criticism concerning the tempo of its response to the coronavirus pandemic — in addition to the very fact FEMA was no more totally built-in into the response efforts beforehand. However Gaynor dismissed these criticisms Sunday.

“I’m not going to look again at what ought to have been, what wasn’t executed,” he instructed ABC’s Martha Raddatz on This Week. “In the present day I’m making an attempt to give attention to at the moment and tomorrow and the place we need to be in a pair weeks.”

Native leaders demand extra assist from the federal authorities on provides

FEMA’s involvement within the coronavirus response was supposed to assist streamline the federal authorities’s response. However most of the nation’s state and native leaders mentioned Sunday that its skill to assist has been restricted by previous errors.

“Had the federal authorities actually began focusing when it grew to become clear that the entire world was going to be confronting this, we might be in a stronger place proper now,” Michigan’s Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer mentioned on This Week.

“Sooner or later we’re going to have to research the place all the failures had been. We’re going to must make selections based mostly on what occurred and what didn’t occur. Lives shall be misplaced as a result of we weren’t ready.”

New York Metropolis Mayor Invoice de Blasio said on Meet the Press that Trump must be utilizing the Protection Manufacturing Act to its full extent to make desperately wanted ventilators and to mobilize the navy for medical support. As a substitute, “he gained’t elevate a finger to assist his hometown,” de Blasio mentioned.

“I can’t be blunt sufficient,” de Blasio mentioned. “If the president doesn’t act, the individuals will die that would have lived in any other case.”

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, said on State of the Union that FEMA has helped centralize requests for assist however his state continues to be receiving solely a sliver of the medical provides it wants.

“It’s a fraction of what we’ve requested. We want tens of millions of masks and lots of of 1000’s of robes and gloves and the remaining,” Pritzker mentioned. “So we’re out on the open market competing for this stuff that we so badly want and we’re succeeding in some methods however we nonetheless want extra.”

Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland said on Meet the Press that whereas issues are bettering, there’s nonetheless a necessity for extra medical provides regardless of the current activation of FEMA.

“We’ve pushed for motion and we’re getting some progress,” he mentioned. “Now it’s not almost sufficient, it’s not quick sufficient, we’re manner behind the curve.”

Ramping up manufacturing shall be key for well being care suppliers within the coming weeks. As Vox’s Dylan Scott has reported, a lot of the US’s hospitals are seeing demand for PPE like masks double — and simply two weeks in the past, Premier Inc., a significant hospital provider, mentioned in a memo, “Most hospitals have solely a pair weeks of provide.”