It’s a good-news, bad-news week regarding the 225,000 Chinese-made personal respirators the National Nuclear Security Administration ordered to protect employees and contractors from COVID-19. The good news is they’re still coming. The bad news is that they will arrive at a 70% price premium, compared to what the agency thought it would pay.
The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapon branch had to cough up the extra money after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the KN-95-rated respirators a small business supplier wanted to source from China.
“In order to get an FDA approved vendor, American Dream Builders identified an alternative approved source to provide the masks,” an NNSA spokesperson in Washington said by email Wednesday. “The contract was modified due to a slightly higher price.”
The whole order, to be sourced by suburban Atlanta-based American Dream Builders, will now cost the NNSA about $415,000, instead of roughly $240,000, according to a contract modification posted this week. The company has until May 29 to deliver. Their promised price works out to a little more than $1.80 for each KN-95-rated respirator.
KN-95 is a Chinese standard similar to the United States’ N95 standard. The 95 indicates a respirator can filter out 95% of particulates. Properly worn, personal respirators can help protect a wearer from catching COVID-19: the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus that broke out in Wuhan, China, last year.
American Dream Builders, officially organized in Georgia in 2017, was one of more than 100 companies to respond to the NNSA’s request for quotation last month. The competition was a total small-business set aside. The agency awarded the respirator contract on April 27, well before the FDA hammer came down on nearly 50 models of Chinese-made masks, including the one American Dream Builders wanted to source for the NNSA.
The NNSA is stockpiling the disposable personal respirators to give out to its own contractors and federal employees, as needed. The agency ordered 186,000 masks for contractors at various agency sites, and 39,000 for federal employees, according to the request for quotation.
American Dream Builders last week declined to comment about whether it had already taken delivery of any masks now banned for sale as respirators in the U.S.
