Germany Is Failing in its Efforts To Obtain Protective Gear
Since then, the federal government has assembled its own task force, internally known as the “troubleshooting agency,” to ensure that ordered items actually arrive. The German Foreign Office now intervenes when other countries confiscate masks and the Transport Ministry ensures planes carrying the items are able to land.
In recent days, Spahn picked up the phone himself to convince textile companies in the country to transition to sewing personal protective gear – and to ask large companies like Volkswagen to make their stockpiles of masks available. Spahn’s team said at the start of this week that the ministry had obtained and distributed 20 million masks. But that’s not enough. According to estimates, German hospitals alone need 17 million FFP2 masks per month, along with 45 million simple protective masks. As the pandemic progresses, that need could grow considerably.
SPD health expert Lauterbach now argues that a federal authority needs to centrally coordinate mask manufacturing in Germany. “That’s not something a politician can do as a side job,” he says. The fact that Bavarian Governor Markus Söder is now also calling for the federal government to intervene is a sign that he views Spahn’s moves critically. Söder, who represents the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), said, “We now need to shift production capacities to this emergency economy.”
“Wild West” Competition
During the meeting between Merkel and the governors on Wednesday, Spahn explained the current situation on the global market. He argued that the conditions were like the “Wild West.” But that’s putting it mildly. Masks have become the subject of a global battle and an object of speculation for fortune hunters and scammers. Many are demanding extortionate prices, with the price going up almost 50-fold in some places.
Everyone is trying to get their hands on what they can. The U.S. has been particularly aggressive on the Chinese market. “The Americans are currently taking a lot of money and buying up the global production of masks and other protective gear. That drives the prices even higher,” says Reinhard Wiedemann, the lead buyer for Asklepios, a private hospital chain. Hospitals say that suppliers are now backing out of their agreements on items that were ordered long ago.
In Germany, the federal government is competing against the states, which are competing with each other. Hospitals, doctors’ offices and nursing homes are fighting over the last stocks of masks. It is a veritable free for all. Hospital managers also claim that hundreds of thousands of masks have been stolen across Germany.
The health minister and the Robert Koch Institute now recommend that single-use masks be cleaned and reused when worse comes to worst. Many hospital workers are afraid. What happens if the number of COVID-19 cases rises and they run out of masks? “Should I then send my doctors and nurses to see patients without masks?” asks the head physician at a large hospital. Some fear a situation like the one in Italy, where doctors needed to work without mouth-coverings in some cases. Many got sick themselves. “In an emergency, our employees will also need to work without protection,” says one hospital manager.
The anger and disappointment directed at politicians, including by doctors in private practice, is growing. Matthias Soyka, an orthopedist in Hamburg, argues that physicians are incurring great personal risk: “To allow us to work now without enough protective equipment is irresponsible. Politicians are abandoning us.”
“The federal government made a big announcement about buying protective masks. The result is disappointing,” says Wiedemann, the buyer at Asklepios. Thus far, he argues, only a small number have arrived, and they were only enough for individual facilities and for a few days. And part of what arrived was unusable, with dried-out fabric. Holding straps fell off. “Those were very old items, maybe from the armed forces or the police.”
But the hospitals aren’t entirely innocent either. The National Pandemic Plan instructs hospitals to take into account “the increased need for personal protective equipment.” But many hospitals didn’t build up a stockpile of masks due to the cost.
Out of Control
ClinicPartner, a company based in Gelsenkirchen, in western Germany, is a national buying syndicate for hospitals and seniors- and nursing homes. For years, ClinicPartner has been buying protective masks from China through agents and trade partners. The company is experiencing how the market is spinning out of control from the front lines.
“In January, we saw how the Chinese were buying huge amounts of masks in Europe,” says CEO Wolfgang Appelstiel. He says they were willing to pay almost any price. “In January and February, when we still thought the virus was far away, the market here was almost emptied out.” Appelstiel accuses the federal government, especially Health Minister Spahn, of negligence. “By February, they must have seen that there needed to be a massive build-up in Germany in order to improve the supply of masks. We felt too secure,” says Appelstiel.
He accuses Spahn of not having sought out the advice of knowledgeable people. “Mr. Spahn wants to solve the problem using conventional means, but he didn’t understand at all how to do business in China,” Appelstiel says. As a result, he argues, a lot of time was wasted on calls for bids that didn’t work.