Public health experts and former Biden transition advisers have also lobbied the White House in recent weeks to give out masks, arguing that cheap and genuine N95s are still difficult for people to find, TheTeCHyWorLD reported last week.
The White House declined to comment.
But the plan is expected to lean heavily on pharmacies — which have become an integral part of the administration’s vaccination campaign — to also distribute the N95s at no cost.
HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Dawn O’Connell told the Senate HELP Committee during a Tuesday hearing on the pandemic response that the federal government has 737 million N95 masks in the Strategic National Stockpile sourced from 12 domestic manufacturers.
“We are also in the process of putting out an agreement for warm base manufacturing so we’re able to keep this capacity that we currently have going, even when demand diminishes,” O’Connell testified.
President Joe Biden last week signaled that the administration planned to distribute masks for free, acknowledging that for some individuals, obtaining high-quality masks is “not always affordable or convenient.”
“I know we all wish that we could finally be done with wearing masks,” Biden said during a speech announcing a new effort to use the military to support hospitals. “I get it. But they’re a really important tool to stop the spread, especially of a highly transmittable Omicron variant.”
Biden on Wednesday is also slated to hold a press conference where he’s expected to tout the administration’s efforts to tamp down the Omicron surge and make Covid-19 tests and masks more widely available.
Biden plans mask giveaway as Omicron surges
