FRONTLINE, Associated Press and Global Reporting Centre Probe Roots of America’s Medical Supply Crisis in New Investigative Documentary

America’s Medical Supply Crisis
Tues., Oct. 6, 2020
Streaming at 7/6c at pbs.org/frontline & in the PBS Video App
Airing at 10/9c on PBS and on YouTube
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When the coronavirus hit the U.S., countless Americans were left unprotected amid a desperate shortage of personal protective equipment, or PPE.

Why was the U.S. left scrambling for PPE and other critical medical supplies as COVID-19 first swept the country — and why do problems persist now, months into the crisis?

A new investigative documentary from FRONTLINE, The Associated Press and the Global Reporting Centre offers answers. Premiering Tuesday, Oct. 6 on PBS, at PBS.org/frontline, on the PBS Video App and on YouTube, America’s Medical Supply Crisis shows the unheeded warnings and explores the deadly consequences.

“This is deplorable,” says American Nurses Association president Ernest Grant. “We send soldiers into battle with the equipment that they need. We send firefighters in to fight fires with the equipment that they need. But yet we were asking nurses to do the exact same thing, but without the equipment that they needed. There’s a failure in the system. I think those who are in position to ensure that the supply chain was being maintained, they failed us big time.”

Over seven months of interviewing manufacturers and government officials, analyzing records and tracking key medical supplies, AP investigative reporters Martha Mendoza and Juliet Linderman, along with producer Peter Klein of the Global Reporting Centre and his team, found opportunities stretching across several presidential administrations where that failure might have been prevented.

An overarching issue, the film finds, is a failure to grapple with the decline of American manufacturing and the resulting fragility of the supply chain between the U.S. and Asia — where masks are produced at such a low cost that U.S. manufacturers can’t compete. When the pandemic hit, the flow of medical supplies to the U.S. plummeted, as many governments held onto PPE and tests for their own citizens.

“We’re dangerously dependent on the Chinese Communist Party for all sorts of masks, equipment, and we know that they, in terms of times of crisis, will hoard that stuff,” says Peter Navarro, a top trade adviser to President Trump, and an administration point person on responding to the disruption of the medical supply chain.

It was the very sort of scenario that Dan Reese — whose company, Prestige Ameritech, is one of the last domestic medical mask manufacturers — has been warning about for years. In the documentary, he says both the Obama and Trump administrations refused to make long-standing commitments to domestic mask manufacturing.

“It’s easy as a politician to stand at the podium and say, ‘America is the most competitive country in the world. We have the best workers,’” Reese says. “The truth is we are not that competitive … The bottom line is China can sell masks into the U.S. market in my territory for cheaper than my raw material costs are.”

Now, months into the pandemic, the supply chain is still fragile. A recent American Nurses Association survey found that two-thirds of nurses were still reusing N-95 masks — more than half of them, for five or more days. And there are questions about what the medical supply chain struggle portends for America’s ability to mass-produce the components, like syringes, that are needed to deliver an eventual vaccine.

For the full story, watch America’s Medical Supply Crisis when it premieres Tues., Oct. 6. The film will be available in full at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS Video App starting that night at 7/6c. It will premiere on PBS stations (check local listings) and on YouTube at 10/9c.

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Credits
America’s Medical Supply Crisis is a FRONTLINE Production with the Global Reporting Centre and The Associated Press. The writer and director is Peter Klein. The producers are Peter Klein and Christine Brandt. The reporters are Juliet Linderman and Martha Mendoza. The co-producer is Kate McCormick. The senior producer is Frank Koughan. The executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.

About FRONTLINE
FRONTLINE, U.S. television’s longest running investigative documentary series, explores the issues of our times through powerful storytelling. FRONTLINE has won every major journalism and broadcasting award, including 95 Emmy Awards and 24 Peabody Awards. Visit pbs.org/frontline and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to learn more. FRONTLINE is produced at WGBH in Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Major funding for FRONTLINE is provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation, the Park Foundation and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation.

About AP The Associated Press is an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting. Founded in 1846, AP today remains the most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiased news in all formats and the essential provider of the technology and services vital to the news business. More than half the world’s population sees AP journalism every day. Online: www.ap.org

About the Global Reporting Centre
The Global Reporting Centre practices, teaches and promotes innovation in global journalism. We take a collaborative approach to reporting. That means working with journalists, media outlets, journalism students and researchers from around the world. The GRC is based at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Visit globalreportingcentre.org to learn more.