Wild West competition for face masks has eased; Illinois stockpiling PPE for a second wave

If Illinois experiences a resurgence of COVID-19 later this year, as many expect, state officials say they should be much better prepared from the standpoint of having the necessary medical supplies this time around.

Deputy Gov. Christian Mitchell said the state has stockpiled tens of millions of face masks and other personal protective equipment — gowns, gloves and shields — in anticipation of a possible second wave.

“I feel we are pretty well-positioned at this point,” said Mitchell, who found himself in the eye of the storm in early spring as the governor’s point man on PPE procurement.

Back then — just three months ago, though Mitchell said it feels like three years — I told you about the Wild West world of emergency PPE procurement in which governments competed for equipment to respond to the pandemic.

Not only were states and cities vying with each other, they also were up against our federal government and foreign nations to locate and purchase face masks and other supplies.

Officials ended up bidding up prices as they fought over scarce inventory, much of it located in China, which posed its own complications because of the Trump administration’s antagonistic relationship with the Chinese. Special flights had to be arranged to bring in materials.

It got so crazy at one point that an Illinois state comptroller’s employee drove a $3.5 million check from Springfield to a McDonald’s restaurant in Dwight to hand it off to a Chicago area moving company owner to beat a deadline to close the deal on an order of face masks from China.

“The dust has settled,” said Arnold Park, a Chicago lawyer who shifted his family’s beauty-supply business into medical supplies during the early days of COVID-19 and later landed two state contracts for PPE.

The need for supplies remains. But the urgency has eased, according to Park, whose Alicia International Inc. used its Chinese relationships to make the switch.

Now that the chaos has subsided, government agencies are back to demanding Dun & Bradstreet numbers from bidders instead of taking chances on anyone with a good pitch, Park said.

According to Mitchell, many members of an emergency procurement task force assembled by Gov. J.B. Pritzker in the early weeks of the pandemic have been returned to their jobs in the state agencies from which they were pulled.

Rich Hein / Sun-Times

The declining number of coronavirus cases in Illinois has allowed state officials to plan for future needs, he said.

Officials studied the rate at which they were using protective equipment at the height of their caseload to project what the state would need “if we got that bad again,” said Mitchell, a former state legislator from Chicago. “The goal is to have a 60-day supply.”

Mitchell said the state is trying to be in a position to have a longer lead time on supply purchases instead of needing everything yesterday.

The emergence of domestic suppliers has made products cheaper and created a more reliable supply chain, he said. It also has alleviated some of the shipping problems, he said. Now that there’s less of a rush, materials can be brought over on ships that take weeks instead of relying on air freight to get them in days.

Another improvement: Hospitals are more capable now of fending for themselves rather than having to look to government for PPE.

Still, one PPE item remains a “struggle” to obtain, according to Mitchell. That’s N95 masks, also known as respirators, which medical personnel need.

“Everyone is looking for them,” he said.

The Pritzker administration has promised to provide 2.5 million masks to allow schoolchildren and teachers to return to the classroom this fall. Mitchell said the plan is to supply each student and teacher with one or two reusable cloth masks that can be washed.

Park is expecting plenty of contract opportunities before school reopens. Kids will have a hard time keeping the masks clean, he said, and they’ll forget to bring them to school.

Anyone remember the good old days when we didn’t even know what PPE meant?