FEMA Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic Update - April 9, 2020

Health & Safety
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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

Office of Intergovernmental Affairs

Please see the advisory below from our partners in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) regarding an update on the Whole-of-America response to COVID-19.

April 9, 2020

FEMA Advisory

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic: Whole-of-America Response

Attached you will find today’s FEMA Daily Briefing Points and a Reference Document for Messaging and Resource Links for the Whole-of-America response to coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. These briefing points include Topline Messages, as well as By the Numbers; FEMA and Department of Health and Human Services Response; and Guidance from Federal Agencies.

Topline messaging includes:

  • FEMA, HHS, and our federal partners work with state, local, tribal and territorial governments to execute a whole-of-America response to COVID-19 pandemic and protect the health and safety of the American people.

  • FEMA Project Air Bridge expedites movement of critical supplies, in varying quantities, from the global market to medical distributors in various locations across the U.S.

    • As of April 8, 21 flights have landed, containing critical personal protective equipment (PPE): gloves, gowns, goggles, and masks.
    • Three flights are scheduled to arrive today, 1 in Chicago, 1 in New York City, and 1 in Dallas/Ft. Worth.
    • An additional 49 flights are scheduled over the next three weeks.
    • Overseas flights arrive at operational hub airports for distribution to hotspots and nationwide locations through regular supply chains. Flight arrivals do not mean supplies will be distributed in the operational hub locations.
    • FEMA is providing distributors with up-to-date information on the locations across the country hardest hit by COVID-19 or in most need of resources now and in the future.
    • Per agreements with distributors, 50 percent of supplies on each plane are for customers within the hotspot areas with most critical needs. The remaining 50 percent is fed into distributors’ normal supply chain to their customers in other areas nationwide.
    • HHS and FEMA determine hotspot areas based on CDC data.

  • Considering both scarcity of ventilators in the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) and current capacity of the private sector to meet demand, the federal government has adopted a process to manage federal ventilator resources to ensure the right amount of ventilators are shipped to the to the right states to sustain life within a 72-hour window.

    • Emergency managers and public health officials submit requests for ventilators to FEMA/HHS, providing detailed data on:
      • Total medical/ hospital beds;
      • Total acute care (ICU) beds;
      • Normal occupancy;
      • Predicted surge occupancy; and
      • Number of ventilators available in your state
    • States can send requests outside of the 72-hour window for consideration by the federal government; allocation decisions and/or shipments, however, should not be expected until the state is within the immediate 72-hour window.
    • The federal government has 8,324 total ventilators available: 7,724 in the Strategic National Stockpile; 600 from the Department of Defense.

  • On April 8, the Department of Health and Human Services announced the first contract for ventilator production rated under the Defense Production Act, to General Motors.

    • GM’s contract, at a total contract price of $489.4 million, is for 30,000 ventilators to be delivered to the Strategic National Stockpile by the end of August, with a production schedule allowing for the delivery of 6,132 ventilators by June 1.
    • On April 3, President Trump issued “Memorandum on Allocating Certain Scarce or Threatened Health and Medical Resources to Domestic Use” directing DHS and FEMA, in consultation with the HHS, to use the Defense Production Act to keep scarce medical resources within the United States for domestic use. CBP is assisting FEMA in temporarily detaining export shipments of PPE. PPE subject to this policy includes: N95 respirators, and a variety of other respirators; surgical masks; and, surgical gloves.

  • On April 8, CDC issued additional guidance to help ensure critical infrastructure workers can perform their jobs safely after potential exposure to the virus.

    • The guidance covers essential health care workers who’ve been exposed to the coronavirus.
    • Essential workers can, under certain circumstances, go back to work, if they’re asymptomatic and take the recommended actions of taking their temperature before they go to work, wearing a face mask at all times, and practicing social distancing when they’re at work.

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To help people before, during and after disasters.

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