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FEMA ADVISORY – April 21, 2020
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic: Whole-of-America Response
Attached you will find today’s FEMA Daily Briefing Points for the Whole-of-America response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. These briefing points include Topline Messages, as well as Supply Chain Task Force; By the Numbers; FEMA and Department of Health and Human Services Response; and Guidance from Federal Agencies.
Topline messaging includes:
- On April 16, President Trump released Guidelines for Opening America Up Again, providing a plan for rolling back social distancing measures and reopening the country’s economy in several phases, depending on location.
- Under the guidelines, states will need to meet six metrics that include demonstrating a downward trajectory of COVID-19 cases over a 14-day period and a robust system for testing health care workers before they can proceed to a phased opening.
- The federal government will continue to work with governors across the country to ensure they have the equipment, supplies and testing resources to reopen safely and responsibly.
- On April 20, President Trump launched the Dynamic Ventilator Reserve Program, an innovative public-private partnership to access up to 65,000 additional ventilators in hospitals across the country that can be redeployed when not in use.
- As of April 20, FEMA, HHS, and the private sector combined have coordinated the delivery of or are currently shipping: 57.4 million N95 respirators, 85.3 million surgical masks, 6.4 million face shields, 12.3 million surgical gowns, 638 million gloves, 10,998 ventilators and 8,450 federal medical station beds.
- FEMA continues to expedite movement of commercially pre-sourced and commercially procured critical supplies from the global market to medical distributors in various locations across the U.S. through Project Airbridge.
- On April 17, Vice President Pence issued a letter to the nation’s governors summarizing the medical equipment and supplies that have been distributed to each state from FEMA from April 1 – 14 through Project Airbridge and the commercial supply network.
- The U.S. has now processed 4.3 million samples, which is more total tests than the following nations combined: Australia, Austria, Canada, France, India, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.
- States should be making full use of the vast testing resources available to them, to include leveraging the full capacity available through commercial laboratories in addition to the capability provided through state laboratories.
- HHS and FEMA have expanded items supplied by the International Reagent Resource (IRR) to help public health labs access free diagnostics supplies and reagents.
- Consolidating testing supplies under the IRR simplifies the resource request process for states and territories and alleviates the burden on public health labs on needing to work with separate suppliers for swabs, reagents and other diagnostic testing supplies.
- On April 16, the FDA announced an expansion of testing options through use of synthetic swabs – with a design similar to Q-tips – to test patients by collecting a sample from the front of the nose.
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FEMA Mission
To help people before, during and after disasters.
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