Researchers: California’s stockpile of masks, other PPE would prevent illness, save jobs
Researchers at UC Berkeley are urging California legislators to pass a bill that would create a stockpile of face masks and other personal protective equipment in case of future pandemics, saying such a cache would have averted much of the human and economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The human cost of inadequate PPE during the current pandemic has been enormous in terms of illness and death due to COVID-19, indirect health threats from reduced health care access, and employment and income loss due to furloughs,” the researchers concluded. “The total avoidable social costs of unemployment insurance payments and the value of lost life could easily each reach the hundreds of millions of dollars in the next pandemic, making a PPE stockpile an urgent investment.”
Lawmakers in Sacramento are currently considering Senate Bill 275, which calls for a PPE stockpile that would cover health care and other essential workers for at least 90-days in a future pandemic or other health emergency.
If these supplies were acquired over the normal course of business rather than during a pandemic, the researchers assert, the state’s overhead costs would be quite modest and many health-related businesses could continue to operate rather than closing.
Because the costs of scarce personal protective equipment skyrocketed amid the pandemic, the researchers noted, the federal government paid out an average of 6 times normal prices for N95 masks on no-bid contracts. New York state, meanwhile, paid an average of $7.50 for each N95 respirator it acquired. They typically sell for about $1 each.
California, which bought and distributed 96.5 million N95 masks through August 11, according to the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. The state has purchased N95 and surgical masks from multiple vendors and, as an example, paid anywhere between $2.13 per N95 mask to $3.30 per unit under a contract with China-based manufacturer BYD, according to previous Sacramento Bee reporting.
After reviewing these pandemic costs, the Berkeley researchers estimated that state of California would have had to pay out $808 million to procure a stockpile for essential workers and related key populations such as the elderly in nursing homes. However, they said, that same PPE would cost only $134.4 million if purchased at non-pandemic prices.
To maintain the stockpile, the state could then spend 23 percent of that $134.4 million to buy new products annually, they said.
“If the stockpile were needed 10 years after establishment, it would have cost the state...$443.6 million—but it would have averted an $807.7 million cost to procure it at pandemic prices,” the researchers noted in one example. “If the stockpile was not needed for 20 years, the state would have spent $752.8 million, still achieving a net savings.”
In those scenarios, the researchers assumed that none of the expiring stock would be used or resold. That is quite implausible, they said, but even if it happened, the state would still come out in pretty good shape even after 30 years. If the equipment had a five-year shelf life, about $254 million in product would be tossed.
It is more likely, researchers said, that at least half the value of expiring inventory could be recouped by selling it or using it, so the state could go at least 38 years before incurring a loss of product.
Such a stockpile would not only save the state money in a crisis, researchers said, it would ensure that health care workers and others had access to the protective equipment they need to protect against a viral contagion. This means health care providers outside the hospital settings don’t have to close up shop, so their employees can continue working.
From March 15 to July 11, roughly 251,100 health care workers in California filed an initial claim or unemployment Insurance and received benefits because they had been furloughed or laid off. In some cases, health care providers decided to permanently close their offices. Hundreds of millions of dollars in unemployment benefits have been paid out.
And, the coronavirus pandemic has take a toll on health care and other essential workers who struggled to find adequate PPE to wear to work in skilled nursing facilities, grocery stores and other work settings. Using data acquired from California and Washington state, the Berkeley researchers built models projecting that more than 50,950 essential California workers had contracted COVID-19, roughly 9% of cases in the state.
They said that, after studying the data, they believe that at least 20,860 cases of COVID-19 could have been prevented in the essential worker population if these individuals had access to the necessary personal protective equipment.
“The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health...has documented that 35% of positive healthcare workers and emergency responders had known COVID-19 workplace exposures,” the researchers reported. “The percentage of work-acquired infections could be as much as two times higher in certain settings: our analysis...of California nursing home data indicates that more than 70% of nursing home staff cases occurred in the context of staff/patient COVID-19 case clusters that are statistically too large to be explained by non-workplace transmission.”
Yet in one study in the Netherlands, where hospital workers had ready access to PPE, the Berkeley researchers reported, scientists genetically sequenced clinical samples of the virus taken from workers and patients and found that it was statistically unlikely that any of the patients or employees had acquired the illness in the health care setting.
By avoiding such cases, the state prevents spread within the workers’ families, researchers noted, and it also prevents payouts for sick leave and potential hospitalizations from serious cases that may result.
“We do not know when the next pandemic or health emergency will arise that will require PPE, but it will come,” the Berkeley researchers stated. “Both fiscal prudence and public health commonsense align in strongly recommending establishment of a robust PPE stockpile for the future.”
This story was originally published August 12, 2020 at 6:25 PM.
