Reuters
Burned by COVID supply crunch, hospitals invest in U.S. mask-making
Two days before Christmas, a cargo ship left Mumbai with a mask-making machine bound for Illinois-based OSF HealthCare, which will use the equipment to make its own N95 masks. After COVID-19 border closures in early 2020 choked shipments from Asia, producer of about 80% of the world’s medical masks and protective gear, OSF and some other hospital groups started investing in U.S. production of key supplies including masks, gowns and critical pharmaceuticals. The goal: Avoid a repeat of the early pandemic’s life-threatening shortages of essential protective gear – an effort that has become vitally important as schools, employers, consumers and the federal government are snapping up high-quality N95s and other masks to shield against the highly contagious Omicron variant.
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