Healthcare workers are at a greater risk of infection and associated mortality due to a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE).
FREMONT, CA: Manufacturers have been under intense pressure to increase output due to the unexpected increase in demand for personal protective equipment (PPE). There is still a global unmet need for PPE, despite prominent manufacturers and even businesses that have never been associated with the sector ramping up production. The higher risk of infection and accompanying death are stark reminders of the catastrophic repercussions of a PPE shortage for healthcare personnel. Manufacturers have also faced extra difficulties due to the high cost of creating PPE due to the rise in the price of raw materials.
Lack of access to trustworthy and current data on demand and production has led to an inefficient supply chain and improper resource allocation. Based on projections and present patterns, this tendency is anticipated to persist.
PPE supply challenges: Hospitals have ordered PPE at an unheard-of pace. According to GlobalData's research of hospital buying information in the US alone, 94 million 3M respirators were purchased. However, it was also clear that not all hospitals had increased their PPE purchasing equally, especially for N95 respirators. N95 respirator purchases disproportionately increased when hospitals were divided into groups according to bed sizes. This suggests that these hospitals are now hoarding, which will cost healthcare workers in hospitals of different sizes since they have substantially less PPE available.
Importantly, even an increase in PPE supplies for these institutions needs to be increased for the upcoming few months. For this reason, manufacturers plan to create 100 million N95 respirators each month.
