The masks will be distributed at pharmacies and community health centers, but some public health experts said the effort was coming too late.
Two years into the coronavirus pandemic, Americans who have had a hard time getting their hands on masks and at-home tests are suddenly being showered with offers of freebies — courtesy of taxpayers and the Biden administration, which had come under sharp criticism for not acting sooner. On Wednesday, the administration announced that it would make 400 million nonsurgical N95 masks available free of charge at community health centers and retail pharmacies across the United States. The White House said that to “ensure broad access for all Americans,” there would be a limit of three masks per person. The news came a day after the administration rolled out covidtests.gov, its new website where Americans can order at-home coronavirus tests at no cost. Taken together, the moves represent a stepped-up effort by the White House to combat Omicron, the fast-moving coronavirus variant that first appeared in November and has fueled a spike in cases, hospitalizations and deaths across the country. But some public health experts said that while the efforts were welcome, they were too late. “It will not be as impactful as it would have been had we done it at the beginning of the Omicron surge or the beginning of the Delta surge,” said Julia Raifman, a health law and public policy expert at the Boston University School of Public Health. The White House called the distribution of masks the “largest deployment of personal protective equipment in U.S. history.” Wednesday’s announcement came days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its mask guidance to acknowledge that cloth masks do not offer as much protection as surgical masks or respirators. The N95 masks will come from the Strategic National Stockpile, the nation’s emergency reserve of medical supplies. The stockpile was badly depleted at the outset of the pandemic, leaving health care workers without masks and other personal protective gear essential to fighting the coronavirus.
