Masks Stack Up in US Warehouses as Nurses Reuse N95 Respirators

As a result, group purchasing organizations that buy supplies for thousands of hospitals have mostly stuck with the same manufacturers. They say they have redoubled efforts to sort out the legitimate suppliers in a “gray market” flooded with hucksters and pseudoscience.

“At the height of the pandemic, we went through thousands of offers, and many of them, I would say the majority of them, turned out to be gray market,” said David Hargraves, senior vice president of supply chain for Premier. “From a volume perspective, our health care providers continue to buy from the larger suppliers that were in the business prior to the pandemic.”

Glucksman said that many more manufacturers have been denied approval from NIOSH.

Some question whether unproven masks are worse than reused masks.

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