Behind the US medical supplies bidding war

According to the real-time monitoring system of the New Coronary Pneumonia Outbreak at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, as of 9 a.m. EST on April 10, there were 466,299 confirmed cases and 16,686 deaths. The United States has become the country with the largest cumulative number of confirmed cases worldwide.

The Office of the Prosecutor General of the US Department of Health and Human Services recently reported that some hospitals have varying degrees of deficiencies in supplies from ventilators, protective clothing, masks to disinfectants, toilet paper, and even sheets and food. In order to alleviate the pressure of shortage of medical supplies, the states of the United States have launched a panic buying model, and a bidding war is intensifying.

It depends on the ability to grab shopping funds

Recently, New York State Governor Andrew Como issued a warning: If according to the current consumption rate, New York State's ventilator is only enough for 6 days, "disturbing". As of April 9, New York State had a total of 159,937 diagnosed cases and 7,067 deaths, the epicenter of the epidemic in the United States.

Como said that once the ventilator is used up, it will have to take other measures to make up for the gap in the ventilator, such as using an anesthesia machine as a ventilator, and multiple patients sharing a ventilator. Como emphasized that the states could not solve the ventilator problem on their own, and criticized the White House for providing too little help, "This is like watching a slow-moving hurricane sweeping the country, you know its path, why not mobilize national resources, when the hurricane comes Have you stayed ahead before? "

The shortage of key medical equipment is pushing up prices. According to U.S. media reports, New York State will face a fiscal gap of up to $ 15 billion due to the surge in medical material procurement costs and reduced taxes. In the absence of coordinated guidance, US states, cities, hospitals, and federal agencies are caught in inefficient procurement competition, adding time and money to fight the epidemic.

On March 31st, Como Tucao was inefficient at the press conference to buy medical supplies: "This is like 50 states bidding for ventilators together on eBay, and finally the Federal Emergency Management Agency won the order at the highest bid. So It is the Federal Emergency Management Agency that has raised the price. What is the point? It should have been purchased by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and distributed to the states as needed. "

As Como said, the bidding lost its rules because of the strong participation of the federal government: "Caesar Health News" reported on April 3 that the federal government had already bought at least $ 137 million worth of medical supplies from the states. As the federal government invoked the National Defense Production Act for a snap-purchase, the 3 million N95 masks scheduled for Massachusetts were intercepted by the US federal government in New York Harbor. The governor of the state, Baker said bluntly: "It has been clearly realized that it is impossible to achieve by conventional means Target now. "

Not only local governments, but also medical institutions in various places also face the situation of materials being intercepted. According to the "Los Angeles Times" report on April 7, hospitals and clinics in seven US states revealed in the interview that their materials or orders had been intercepted by the federal government for expropriation. The US Federal Emergency Management Agency did not disclose these "acquisitions", nor did it specify the reasons, scope and destination of confiscated materials.

People expect that the federal government, which holds the national strategic reserve, can play the role of "distributor" and deliver medical supplies to where it is needed. However, some governors complained that they had not obtained materials from the national strategic reserve, or received more medical equipment than their requirements.

Earlier, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had disclosed that counties with severe epidemics in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, Washington, and California will receive priority in receiving supplies. However, on April 1st, Illinois Governor Pritzker issued a document complaining, "The materials available are only 10% of the number of applications." "Washington Post" pointed out that "the status of each state in the election" may be the key behind the distribution of materials.

Even if you get supplies, you may face the dilemma that the supplies are not available. The Associated Press reported on April 4 that a large number of expired items appeared in the equipment distributed from the national reserve materials, and nearly 6,000 medical masks sent to Alabama had been completely dried and rotted, and more than 150 breathing devices were sent to Los Angeles There is a problem with the machine. In New Hampshire, a congressional delegation sent a letter to the US Department of Health and Human Services, saying that many supplies received by the state have expired. Among them, 16,000 latex gloves cannot be used in the medical environment because they cause allergies.

In this situation, the states have to "show their magical powers" and find ways to buy supplies by themselves. Colorado Governor Jared Polis announced on April 1 that the state is in contact with Chinese manufacturers to purchase medical supplies; Massachusetts, after multiple contacts and coordination, dispatched the professional football team New England Patriots private jet from China 1.2 million masks were snapped up.

In response to the state's competition for purchases, Trump said at a press conference that each state needs to solve this problem by itself, and each state should have established its own reserves, "I am not an orderer."

The shortage of materials seriously affects the epidemic resistance

In fact, under the epidemic, not only are there shortages of materials in the states, but the US federal government has also "no surplus food." On April 1, Trump confirmed at the White House conference that the federal government ’s reserves of personal protective equipment and other medical supplies have almost been exhausted. In anticipation of a sharp increase in the number of deaths in the next few weeks, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, through an intermediary agency, purchased 100,000 military body bags from the Pentagon.

The epidemic peak has not yet arrived, and the number of ventilators is insufficient. For this reason, doctors in the United States will have to face an extremely difficult choice: who to use the ventilator for.

According to a report by CNN on April 3, hundreds of American hospitals have adopted a patient rating system to help doctors decide who can get a ventilator. The system scores patients based on their likelihood of surviving during hospitalization and their long-term survival after discharge. The same score gives priority to younger patients.

The developer of the system, Douglas White, a professor of critical illness medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pennsylvania, said: "These are inevitable and tragic choices, and either choice is bad."

The medical staff on the front line also suffered from the shortage of medical supplies. A few days ago, the New York State Nurses Association conducted a survey on the work of nurses during the epidemic, and more than 3300 nurses filled out the questionnaire. The survey revealed that 64% of nurses had insufficient personal protective equipment and 72% of nurses had been exposed to patients with new coronary pneumonia.

A nurse in the American Intensive Care Unit posted a video on social media a few days ago, crying that her hospital was unable to distribute masks due to a shortage of medical supplies, forcing her to resign for personal and family safety. She wrote on social media: "The United States is not ready to respond to this outbreak and nurses are not safe."

A spokesperson for the US Department of Health and Human Services has said that the federal government reserves 13 million N95 masks, which is enough to protect medical personnel from the risk of infection, but this is clearly far from meeting current needs. Medical staff usually change a mask every time a patient is seen, but the actual situation is that they will use a mask for several days.

Trump pushed this responsibility to the Obama administration. He said at the White House press conference on March 26 that the Obama administration did not leave him any emergency reserves, and he has made efforts to quickly make up for the shortage of inventory.

Due to the rapid spread of the epidemic and the shortage of medical supplies, the US government has announced a ban on the export of some medical protective materials, and it has a conflict with the main manufacturer of N95 masks, 3M. Trump asked 3M to ship the masks it produced overseas to the United States, and was not allowed to export N95 masks to Canada, Latin America and other places. 3M warned that the move might lead to "retaliation" in other countries. Although the US government finally reached a settlement with 3M to allow it to continue exporting, the local government in Canada, plagued by the epidemic, was still very dissatisfied with the matter.

It is not just Canada, but medical supplies purchased in many European countries have also been intercepted by the United States. France ’s Paris Region Council President Pecheres said in a TV show: "The United States has paid a high price and bought a batch of goods that France has previously determined." The 200,000 masks ordered were intercepted by the United States in Bangkok, Thailand. , Andreas Gesell, the interior minister of Berlin, Germany, angrily accused the United States of this behavior as "modern pirates".

In order to alleviate the shortage of masks, the United States also urgently approved non-N95 masks certified by the European Union and 5 countries, but KN95 masks produced in China were not allowed to enter the United States. It was not until April 3, local time, that the US Food and Drug Administration changed its attitude, announcing the approval of KN95 masks from China for use in medical settings.

"The new coronary pneumonia epidemic has opened up a 'new battlefield' for the contradictory transatlantic relations, which exposes national selfishness and multilateralism is completely thrown aside." The French newspaper Le Monde pointed out in an article.

Opposition and game bring obstacles to responding to the epidemic

On April 3, the US Centers for Disease Control formally recommended that Americans wear cloth non-medical masks in public. More and more governors and politicians across the United States have also called on the public to wear masks in public places even if they are free of illness.

Recommend that people wear masks is seen as a major change in the US government's epidemic prevention measures. Previously, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that asymptomatic people not wear masks. Until April 2, the US CDC official website still reminded: "If you are not sick, you do not need to wear a mask unless you are taking care of the patient and the patient Can't wear a mask. "

"It has not been recommended to wear a mask before, saying that the mask is a virus incubator, and it is more likely to be infected if it is not worn properly. Now let us wear a mask, but where do we go to buy a mask at this time?" A resident from Boston complained on social media Road.

A number of media publications pointed out that the current lack of medical supplies in the United States is directly related to the failure of the US government to take timely measures in the early stages of the epidemic. "There are various indications that the 'critical period' of nearly two months of epidemic preparedness was wasted."

"Just three weeks ago, the official claim was that the New Corona virus was no big deal. Instead, the rhetoric was a malicious political lie." Paul Krugman, a professor at the City University of New York and a Nobel laureate in economics, said those who tried to contain The efforts to live up to the threat of the new crown virus were distorted as "a scam for other purposes."

The New York Times issued an article on March 28, saying that when scientists issued warnings about the outbreak, the heads of the three government agencies responsible for detecting and combating threats such as the new crown virus did not express the urgency of requiring early defense, but strictly restricted the detection. The crowd makes it difficult for major medical institutions to deploy diagnostic tests. The key agencies and government officials have their own positions and lack of trust, which prevents the US government from uniting to respond quickly.

This inconsistency is a microcosm of American politics: the confrontation and game between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have greatly hindered the effective response to the epidemic. In the year of the general election, this severe public health crisis has become a political arena for the struggle between the two parties. The Mayor of Los Angeles said in an interview: "I am really worried that turning the epidemic response into a partisan issue will kill people because there is no way to keep the virus out of your city." (Reporter Li Yunshu )