When the tale of the state’s pandemic response is written (no, disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s self-congratulatory book doesn’t count), historians will note that most of New York’s stockpile of N95 masks and other PPE had expired when the crisis hit.
According to newly released Health Department records, the out-of-date materials included at least 70 percent of the stockpile’s 4.4 million face masks, 41 percent of its 1,763 ventilators and 23 percent of its surgical gowns — all critically needed when COVID first broke out.
The federal government’s emergency stockpile wasn’t much better. Some states reported that the items they received were well past expiration dates and definitely not suitable for surgical settings.
Infectious-disease experts had long warned of some pandemic, and the nation had seen an Ebola scare and outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease in the years before 2020. Yet government officials failed to maintain their strategic stockpiles.
A report by the Empire Center’s Bill Hammond notes that “a better maintained stockpile could have helped the state control the spread of a highly contagious virus and improved treatment of critically ill victims.” Instead, nurses infamously had to resort to wearing homemade gear crafted out of garbage bags. How many lives, including those of frontline workers, were needlessly lost in the early days of the pandemic?
New York government officials need to make sure the state has enough PPE in its stockpile for another potential health emergency. AP Photo/John Minchillo, FileHammond notes that New York established its pandemic stockpile in 2006 after avian flu and swine flu outbreaks. The Legislature allocated $29 million a year “to amass supplies, equipment and medications.” But that got cut to $1.2 million during the budget crisis amid the 2009 financial meltdown — and was never restored.
Clearly, governments at all levels need to do more than hold “tabletop” exercises to prepare for future crises. The state and city comptrollers need to add auditing of these emergency stockpiles to their portfolio of regular reviews.
But there’s a larger issue here: How many other emergency preparations are outdated, expired or otherwise neglected? You can’t plan for everything, but officials should be checking all the plans they do have to see what needs attention.
