The federal government is shipping 1.5 million N95 respirators from the national stockpile to nursing homes reporting supply shortages. 

In addition, the first $2.5 billion of a previously announced $5 billion in funds dedicated to nursing homes will be distributed to facilities this week, administration officials confirmed. The funds can be applied to any COVID-19 expenses, including testing, personal protective equipment, staffing or training, they said.

Plans for the critical N95 masks were first announced by Rear Admiral John Polowczyk, Supply Chain Task Force lead for the Department of Health and Human Services, during a press call Tuesday. The department formally announced the move later that evening.

The masks will be given to more than 3,300 U.S. nursing homes that have reported that they were running low on supplies through the National Healthcare Safety Network. The number of respirators distributed to each nursing home is being based on the number of medical staff employed at each facility. 

The masks have been produced by O&M Halyard and certified by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, according to HHS. 

“Each shipment will contain a 4:1 mix of size regular and small respirators as validated by historical distribution ratios from the medical distributors,” the department explained. 

HHS noted the respirators are meant to supplement existing supplies for personal protective equipment, and each facility will receive a seven-day supply meant to support an entire shift before being discarded. The shipments will begin this Friday. 

“This additional federal supplement of N95 respirators from the SNS will immediately help those nursing homes prevent the spread of COVID-19 and keep the patients they care for safe during this pandemic,” said Robert Kadlec, M.D., HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response, who oversees the national stockpile.

Polowczyk credited the release of the masks to the federal government’s use of the Defense Production Act. 

“Because of our use of the [DPA] in March, we’ve been able to work with domestic suppliers of N95s — 3M, Honeywell,  Owens & Minor, Draeger — and increased domestic production from about 30 million masks a month pre-COVID to 100 million masks per month currently,” Polowczyk said Tuesday. 

He added that by the fall, the United States expects to be producing 160 million masks per month. 

“We’re at a fundamentally different place than we were in the months of March and April at the beginning of the COVID pandemic,” Polowczyk said. “You can see we continue to be in a much better place.”

This article appeared in the McKnight’s Business Daily, a joint effort of McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Long-Term Care News.