Understanding the Challenges of Providing Personal Protective Equipment in the United States During COVID-19

Abstract

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization designated “coronavirus disease 2019” (COVID-19) a global pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic caused massive shortages in the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) supplies needed to treat the virus as the disease spread rapidly throughout the world during 2020. Global supply chains suddenly became a new problem in public attention. In the United States, there were no reliable databases about what was needed in different hospitals, states, or healthcare systems. Also, there was no accurate database of the production capabilities of U.S. suppliers of PPE. The aim of our research was to investigate the best approaches to determine the needs for PPE during the pandemic and to improve the methods used to predict the PPE needs for hospitals and other healthcare facilities. The second part of our research was to develop an understanding of the capabilities of the U.S.-based companies to produce large quantities of specific PPE for both the current pandemic and future needs. We feel that this work has implications for anyone in the healthcare supply chain space (Department of Defense [DoD] task forces, Defense Logistics Agency [DLA], Defense Health Agency [DHA], Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA], Department of Health and Human Services [DHHS], Department of Homeland Security [DHS], state, local, and healthcare systems).