COVID-19 and the Strategic National Stockpile

Federal public health officials warned Tuesday that the spread of coronavirus in the U.S. is "inevitable.

As the nation faces increased strains on its public health workforce from the COVID-19 outbreak, a new report examines the makeup of the U.S. public health workforce. This new primer describes the current public health workforce size, expectations for growth, employee demographics, job tenure, and the skill sets most in demand. This description is offered against the broader backdrop of the overall state and local government sector.

 The U.S. government has a secretive, $7 billion stash of emergency medical equipment — one that it drew on to respond to the terror attacks of 9/11, to prepare for a subsequent threat of anthrax attacks in 2001, and to help thousands of homes guard against Zika with insecticide.

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus, however, marks the first potential pandemic to reach U.S. soil since the H1N1 flu of 2009, teeing up one of the biggest challenges yet for the 21-year-old store, known as the Strategic National Stockpile.

Already, the outbreak has placed a significant strain on the stores of masks, medicine, and medical equipment. The stockpile has been called on to help with efforts to repatriate and quarantine Americans flown back from China and Japan, but has come under fire for a perceived shortage of masks — and for allowing millions of masks already in its stock to pass their expiration dates.

In past disasters, the SNS has provided resources. The timeline is shown below

Today, the Strategic National Stockpile works with governmental and non-governmental partners to upgrade the ability to respond to a national public health emergency, ensuring that federal, state, and local agencies are ready to receive, and stage and distribute products.

Since its beginning, the stockpile has responded to multiple large-scale emergencies including floods, hurricanes, and influenza pandemics. It has also supported various small-scale deployments for the treatment of individuals with life-threatening infectious diseases like anthrax, smallpox, and botulism.

Still, public health officials have criticized the stockpile for, in some cases, failing to act with sufficient urgency. After officials in Washington state requested 233,000 respirator masks, the stockpile initially offered to supply less than half the amount, the Washington Post reported. An SNS spokeswoman said the state eventually received the full requested shipment.

And the store has already proven valuable in other areas, Adams said. Beyond sending masks to hard-hit states, the stockpile helped with efforts to bring Americans in China and Japan back to the U.S., supplying protective equipment for medical workers who monitored the Americans’ health during their stays on military bases. That effort largely relied on materials stored in SNS warehouses but maintained by the National Disaster Medical System, a separate emergency medical-supply distribution network.

“We were quite involved with moving matériel to support the repatriation of State Department [employees] and other Americans from China, and then a follow-on mission of doing so from Japan,” Adams said.

Adams added that the stockpile has since “transitioned into providing support to what some would call ‘hot spot areas,’ states where they’re actively managing large numbers of patients with COVID-19,” the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, namely by shipping respirator masks to hard-hit regions like the Seattle metropolitan area.

Coming at a bad time there are ongoing changes for the NSP which hindered a quicker response

A spreadsheet detailing the spread of Covid-19 on a cruise ship