Strategic National Stockpile

During the first decade of the Cold War, the United States accumulated a civil defense medical stockpile at 32 storage facilities. The supplies began to degrade in the 1960s, and were disposed of and the stockpile program closed in 1974.[3]

In April 1998, President Bill Clinton read the Richard Preston novel The Cobra Event, a fiction book about a mad scientist spreading a virus throughout New York City. As a result, Clinton held a meeting with scientists and cabinet officials to discuss the threat of bioterrorism. He was so impressed, that he asked the experts to meet with senior-level aides at the Department of Defense and in the Department of Health and Human Services. At that time, the government had stockpiles of medications for military personnel, but did not have them for civilians. Shortly after, The Washington Post wrote that Clinton surprised many in Washington at how fast he and his National Security Council had moved to change that. By October, Clinton signed into law[4] a new budget of $51 million for pharmaceutical and vaccine stockpiling to be carried out by the CDC.[5]

The US Congress appropriated funds for the CDC to create a pharmaceutical and vaccine stockpile to handle biological and chemical threats from disease that could affect large numbers of the US civilian population, in Public Law 105–277 dated October 21, 1998.[6] The original name was the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile (NPS) program, but since the original authorization additional materials have been added to the stockpile.

On March 1, 2003, the NPS was renamed the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) program with joint management by Department of Homeland Security and Department of Health and Human Services.

In at least 10 government reports from 2003 to 2015, federal officials predicted the U.S. would experience a shortage of ventilators and other medical supplies if it faced a large-scale infectious disease outbreak.[7]

In 2005 and in preparation for a predictable pandemic influenza, the Bush administration called for the coordination of domestic production and stockpiling of protective personal equipments.[8] In 2006, the US Congress funded the integration of protective equipment to a Strategic National Stockpile: 52 million surgical masks and 104 million N95 air-filtration masks were acquired and added.[8] During the 2009 flu pandemic, tens of millions of masks were used, but during the Obama administration strategic stocks were not “significantly restored”, neither have they been during the Trump administration.[9]

As of March 2020, the national strategic stockpile had 40 million masks while 100 times more were expected to be necessary to handle the pandemic crisis.[8]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, states criticized the lack of availability of medical supplies from the federal stockpile. At a White House press conference on April 2, 2020, Jared Kushner commented "The notion of the federal stockpile was it's supposed to be our stockpile. It's not supposed to be states' stockpiles that they then use."[10][11] The idea that the stockpile was not a backup for states that run out of supplies was disputed by Governor Laura Kelly of Kansas,[12] among others.

The description of the stockpile, as listed on its website, was changed the day after Kushner's remarks to better align with them, from:

"Strategic National Stockpile is the nation’s largest supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out. When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency. Organized for scalable response to a variety of public health threats, this repository contains enough supplies to respond to multiple large-scale emergencies simultaneously."[13][14][15][16]

to:

"The Strategic National Stockpile's role is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well. The supplies, medicines, and devices for life-saving care contained in the stockpile can be used as a short-term stopgap buffer when the immediate supply of adequate amounts of these materials may not be immediately available."[14][15][16]

The actual supply of drugs and supplies that make up the SNS are located in twelve[17] secret locations strategically placed throughout the US. The locations appear to look like ordinary commercial warehouses. Inside the warehouses, supplies are stacked on shelves that can measure five stories high.[18] Armed personnel guard the warehouse contents and, according to NPR in 2020, during the COVID-19 global pandemic, "rows of ventilators, which can support people who are having trouble breathing, are kept charged up and ready to roll at a moment's notice."[1]

The SNS holds a variety of items that would be helpful to the general population in the event of a widespread disease outbreak.

The SNS successfully deployed 12-hour "push packages" to New York City and Washington, D.C., in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and managed inventory (MI) to numerous locations in response to the anthrax terrorist attacks of 2001.

Following the landfall of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the Gulf coast of Mississippi and Louisiana in September 2005, the CDC deployed SNS assets, technical assistance and response units, plus the newly developed and rapidly deployable "federal medical contingency stations" to state-approved locations near or in the disaster areas. The contingency stations, later renamed Federal Medical Stations (FMS), are caches of equipment and supplies provided by the SNS, set up in local "buildings of opportunity" and staffed by local or federal medical personnel to provide triage, low acuity care, and temporary holding of displaced patients for whom local acute care systems are damaged or destroyed.

Since the original deployment following Hurricane Katrina, FMSs have been deployed to support other major disaster responses including Superstorm Sandy. The FMS program is a collaboration between CDC and the Office of Emergency Management under the HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. In 2014, responding to stakeholder feedback, a 50-bed FMS cache was developed and made available in addition to the original 250-bed FMS.[23]

The SNS released one-quarter of its antiviral drug inventory (Tamiflu and Relenza), personal protective equipment (PPE), and respiratory protection devices, to help every US state respond to the H1N1 Influenza 2009 swine influenza outbreak in the United States.[24]

The SNS was involved in providing supplies to the repatriation efforts of State Department employees from China and Japan during the early stages of the COVID-19 epidemic, and shipped thousands of N95 masks to Washington, Massachusetts, and New York states in an effort to respond to COVID-19 "hot spots" as community spread began in the US.[25] It stockpiles a stated 13 million masks, but has placed an order to be fulfilled by September 2021 for 500 million more.[26] Furthermore, the SNS was criticized during the COVID-19 pandemic for containing millions of masks already past their expirations.[26]

On April 1, 2020, Department of Homeland Security officials told reporters that the cache of personal protective equipment stored by the SNS was almost depleted due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. This was later confirmed by President Donald Trump. PPE from the SNS is being sent directly to health facilities across the country.[27]

Washington State announced on April 5 that it would return more than 400 ventilators it had received from the Stockpile "...to help states facing higher numbers of COVID-19 cases."[28]

Section 403 of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act of 2013 (H.R. 307; 113th Congress) reauthorized the Strategic National Stockpile for FY2014-FY2018. It required the Secretary of Health and Human Services to:

1. submit to the appropriate congressional committees, to the extent that the disclosure of such information does not compromise national security, the annual review of the contents of the Stockpile; and
2. review and revise the contents of the Stockpile to ensure that the potential depletion of countermeasures currently in the Stockpile is identified and appropriately addressed, including through necessary replenishment.[29]

• COVID-19 pandemic in the United States § Abandoned and delayed efforts to improve mask and ventilator supply

• Official site
• "Strategic National Stockpile: A Look Back at the Last 20 Years" on YouTube