Coronavirus: 3M to Produce 35,000,000 Respirator Masks a Month in U.S.

Multinational corporation 3M will manufacture 35 million much-needed respirator masks in the United States every month for Americans to help President Donald Trump’s administration fight the coronavirus.

In the midst of the Wuhan, China-originated coronavirus crisis, 3M CEO Mike Roman announced that they will be manufacturing about 35 million N95 respirator masks a month — 90 percent of which will go to American healthcare workers who are in desperate need of medical supplies.

“Since the initial COVID-19 outbreak, we’ve ramped up to maximum production levels of N95 respirator masks and doubled our global output to a rate of more than 1.1 billion per year, or nearly 100 million per month,” Roman said in a statement. “In the United States we are producing 35 million respirator masks per month; of these, more than 90% are now designated for healthcare workers, with the remaining deployed to other industries also critical in this pandemic, including energy, food and pharmaceutical companies.”

Roman said more than half a million respirator masks are currently being delivered from the company’s South Dakota-based plant to highly affected cities like New York City and Seattle, Washington. The respirator masks are expected to arrive on March 23.

“We are also ready to expedite additional shipments across the country,” Roman said.

Roman thanked the Trump administration for expanding the PREP Act, which allows all N95 disposable respirator masks to be used in healthcare environments and has helped increase 3M’s distribution of the respirator masks to American healthcare workers.

“We call for additional legislation to ensure all critically needed reusable respirator masks are equally available, which will help conserve the supply of N95s,” Roman requested.

As Breitbart News noted, Trump’s administration is working closely with manufacturers based in the U.S. to greatly increase domestic production of supplies, equipment, and products that Americans need amid the coronavirus crisis.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro is in talks with General Motors (GM) and Ford to potentially have the automakers retool their American factories to produce ventilators and other medical necessities. Navarro said he is also working with alcohol manufacturer Pernod Ricard to produce hand sanitizer in the U.S. free of charge to the federal government.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.