On April 2, a plane left China with 1.2 million N95 masks. In normal, pre-covid-19 times, that would be a big stash, according to an article on The Washington Post website.
Most hospitals bought a few thousand N95s per year. But when the number of covid-19 patients exploded, a million masks wasn’t that many. Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Robert Kadlec said in February that the U.S. would need 3.5 billion N95s in a serious pandemic.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the median hospital stay of a surviving Covid-19 patient is 10 to 13 days. That works out to between 350 and 520 N95s per patient.
In mid-May, as emergency supply lines increased and reuse of hospital garb has become common, the answer is somewhere in between, according to the article.
Building Around Care: Lessons in Modernizing Active Healthcare Environments
St. Luke's Heart Hospital Opens at Anderson Campus in Pennsylvania
WindRose Health Network Ensnared in Vendor Data Breach
How Efficiency Checklists Help Hospitals Save Energy, Water and Money
Intermountain Healthcare Receives $50M Gift for Standalone Children's Hospital