COVID protective gear expires, piles up—and goes to waste
What happens when hospitals en masse stock up on supplies to withstand a health crisis of unknown duration?
Tons of once-coveted supplies end up in the trash.
That’s what’s happening across country now as many millions of masks, gloves, gowns and other pieces of personal protective equipment pass their use-by dates.
As the Associated Press reports this week, some states are so inundated with unused gear they scooped up for the COVID-19 pandemic that they’re measuring not in numbered estimates but gross weights.
Rhode Island, the smallest state in the country by land mass, told the news service it’s shredded or recycled 829 tons of PPE.
Maryland has deep-sixed more than $93 million worth of the stuff.
And in Ohio, which stocked warehouse shelves with more than 227 million PPE units during the pandemic, auctioned off 393,000 gowns for, presumably, pennies on the dollar. The Buckeye State also threw away millions more gowns, masks, gloves and whatever else they had but didn’t use.
These now suboptimal if not unsafe supplies had cost Ohio about $29 million in federal money, the AP reports.
“There was no way to know, at the time of purchase, how long the supply deficit would last or what quantities would be needed,” Ohio Department of Health spokesperson Ken Gordon tells the news operation.
Louis Eubank, head of the South Carolina health department’s COVID-19 coordination office, says that state has ditched more than 650,000 expired masks.
“Anytime you’re involved in a situation where you’re recalling how difficult it was to get something in the first place, and then having to watch that go or not be used in the way it was intended to be used, certainly, there’s some frustration in that,” Eubank says.
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.