![]() Her division, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, oversees the federal stockpile. ![]() It “fell short,” said Dawn O’Connell, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response appointed by President Joe Biden. Those flawed supply decisions left health care workers without essential protective gear, or in some cases, the right equipment needed to provide lifesaving care to desperately ill patients during the pandemic’s first wave. Bodies are moved to a refrigeration truck serving as a temporary morgue at Wyckoff Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y., on April 6, 2020. The early missteps can be attributed, in part, to a series of choices made by an obscure governing body about how to stock the stockpile - decisions made without input from health care workers or domestic manufacturers, experts said. NBC News was granted exclusive access inside one of the top-secret facilities - the first news organization allowed inside with television cameras since the pandemic began - and spoke with federal health officials who are now grappling with rebuilding supplies, correcting the mistakes of the Covid crisis and trying to prepare for the next pandemic. The facility, part of the Strategic National Stockpile, rose to prominence in the early days of the Covid pandemic - not for its utility, but for its failure to provide health care workers with lifesaving supplies. If not for the security guards checking credentials, it’d be easy to dismiss the facility - one of more than 12 strategically located across the United States - as just another warehouse.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |