Remember the shortage of medical gowns during COVID? Feds spending $350 million for stockpile

WASHINGTON (AP) — Six U.S. companies will spend at least $350 million to manufacture medical gowns to store in the Strategic National Stockpile, years after doctors and nurses working in hospitals found themselves without the equipment while COVID-19 raged.

The purchase of the gowns is one of the final steps toward shoring up the personal protective equipment in the stockpile after it was depleted just weeks into the COVID pandemic. Equipment had not been regularly restocked in the years before the crisis began.

The new gowns are among the many purchases the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response has made in recent years to restock the emergency coffers, assistant secretary Dawn O’Connell said.

The administration wants to “make sure the country would never be caught in the same position they were in 2020, when the stockpile was opened on one of our worst days, one of our worst months, and people couldn’t find what they needed in it,” O’Connell said.

A range of U.S. companies were selected to manufacture the gowns, including a California lacrosse equipment maker and a New York embroidery studio.

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