President Trump Announces Plan To Reconfigure National Stockpile
- May 15, 2020
The Washington Post (5/14, Goldstein) reports President Trump announced “a plan to reconfigure the government’s chronically undersupplied stockpile of emergency gear to help combat the coronavirus pandemic, accelerating manufacturing and broadening the array of supplies it houses.” President Trump said the Administration is launching a “groundbreaking initiative” to “replenish and modernize” the national stockpile of masks, ventilators, and other supplies.
Modern Healthcare (5/14, Brady, Subscription Publication) reports when coronavirus first started to spread in the US, “the federal government had one to three weeks of supply for most items in the national stockpile,” so the Trump Administration “aims to create a 90-day supply for those items to create ‘a buffer’ until the U.S. can increase domestic manufacturing surge capacity.” President Trump said, “What we’re doing is creating a much more robust, much more capable and much less vulnerable Strategic National Stockpile. This is going to require the permanent restructuring of a whole series of relationships using information technology and contracting capabilities very differently than anyone has in the past.”
The Wall Street Journal (5/14, Ballhaus, Levy, Subscription Publication) and POLITICO New York (5/14, Lim) also cover the story.