A U.S. agency that oversees the national stockpile of emergency medical supplies failed to fulfill state and local requests for supplies amid the coronavirus pandemic due to major problems maintaining its stash of critical items.
“The United States relies on a just-in-time medical delivery system that lacks resilience in times of crisis,” Dr. Daniel M. Gerstein, senior policy researcher for the RAND Corporation think tank, told senators in a hearing on the agency’s pandemic response Wednesday. “Overall, the federal response has been slow and inconsistent, confusing at times and has deservedly become a target of criticism. We have seen shortfalls in areas from the basic science to our emergency management governance and doctrine in strategic communications with the American people.”
The Strategic National Stockpile agency, or SNS, with the Department of Health and Human Services was formed in 1998 with the purpose of acquiring large amounts of important healthcare items and getting them out to local, state, tribal, and territorial areas in emergencies when those materials may not be immediately available. The then-National Pharmaceutical Stockpile was the country’s national repository of antibiotics, vaccines, chemical antidotes, and medical supplies. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, its name and mission were changed to include a broader range of medical supplies, making it the nation’s largest supply of lifesaving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies.
But the lack of clarity in how responsible it was for responding to a widescale outbreak and insufficient funding prevented the agency from riding into the 2020 pandemic as emergency responders and local leaders had expected, according to health experts who briefed the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Wednesday.
“It has gone from being something that was oriented toward bioterrorism into all-hazards [chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear] preparation, then influenza pandemic,” said former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Julie Gerberding.
W. Gregory Burel, who oversaw the national stockpile from 2007 through January, defended the agency’s response, saying its stash was diminished following the 2009 outbreak of H1N1, or swine flu, and that it was never replenished due to a lack of congressional funding. As the U.S. tried to surge ventilators, personal protective equipment, diagnostic tests, and oxygen to the public amid the present pandemic, the national stockpile came up short, Gerberding said.
“It’s impossible for Congress or anyone else to be able to budget to the stockpile if there isn’t clarity about what it’s supposed to accomplish at what scale,” Gerberding said.
An Oregon emergency management official said his state had depended on the stockpile when it needed assistance but applied for help only to find out it could not assist.
“Put simply, states generally did not receive items from the SNS that they needed, or if they did, it was in increments so small that it became insignificant or what was provided was past a functional expiration date,” Andrew Phelps, director of Oregon’s Office of Emergency Management, wrote in a prepared statement.
Gerstein called for SNS to be part of a broader national security chain instead of being the sole agency that others, such as the Federal Emergency Management Administration, must count on.
