Why Can't America Make Enough N95 Masks? 6 Months Into Pandemic, Shortages Persist

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, there were lots of stories about scrappy manufacturers promising to revamp their factories to start making personal protective equipment in the U.S.

Back in the spring, fuel-cell maker Adaptive Energy retooled part of its factory in Ann Arbor, Mich., to make plastic face shields. Now, 100,000 finished shields are piling up in cardboard boxes on the factory floor — unsold.

"We jumped in head first," said Ranvir Gujral, the company's principal owner. He added ruefully: "We weren't the only ones with a brilliant idea of getting our folks back to work and trying to help and manufacture PPE."

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, President Trump and industry officials have talked a lot about the need to ramp up domestic manufacturing of critical protective gear. But six months on, there are still shortages of all kinds of PPE, like N95 respirator masks, while face shields are easy to find.

The disconnect can be traced, in part, to the lack of a coherent national plan.

When Gujral and other domestic manufacturers saw an opportunity to help protect frontline workers — and to keep their own employees working, many of them shifted gears to make face shields and hand sanitizer, which are relatively simple to produce.

But fewer shifted to making N95 masks, which are far more complicated, and they're in short supply. Nurses and doctors are re-using masks over and over again. Some small medical practices can't even find supplies they can afford. ...