California will pay Chinese electric car manufacturer BYD Auto $3.30 for individual coronavirus masks in a deal made under a $1 billion coronavirus response contract.
Officials under the administration of Gov. Gavin Newsom have previously said the agreement with BYD will produce 200 million masks per month through the end of June, according to the Los Angeles Times. Of that amount, 150 million will be N95 masks, and 50 million will be surgical masks.
The LA Times found that documents from the California State Treasurer’s Office, which oversees the funds, only includes the cost of the N95 masks but not the cost of the traditional surgical masks the company has also sold to the state. Nearly 10 million surgical masks have already been shipped by BYD, many of which have have been distributed across counties in the state.
While high demand for personal protective equipment in the midst of the pandemic fluctuated costs for gear such as masks, California struck a deal to pay under half of what other states were paying at one time. Some states were paying up to $7 per mask during the height of fluctuation.
A spokesperson from Newsom’s office called the cost the state was paying a “fair one for taxpayers.”
But Sergio Fernandez de Cordova, chairman of a New York media nonprofit group helping secure affordable mask deals with government agencies, said the $3.30 masks could be 30 cents higher than it costs BYD to manufacture and ship.
Cordova told the LA Times it could’ve been possible for California to create a large amount of masks on its own for less than a dollar.
Last week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the city made a deal to pay 79 cents for Honeywell N95 masks, although they may not arrive until summer or fall.
FOX News reported state lawmakers were growing skeptical of Newsom’s lack of detail on the state’s purchase in recent weeks.
The governor told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that California was competing against other states, countries, and the federal government for equipment and decided to take matters into its own hands.
While the state received 1 million masks from the federal government, Newsom said there’s just not enough in the national stockpile for more.
“We decided enough’s enough,” Newsom told Maddow. “Let’s use the purchasing power of the state of California as a nation-state. We did just that.”
