His remarks, set to begin at 2:15 p.m. EDT, will follow a tour of the 200,000 square-foot Allentown facility operated by global healthcare company Owens and Minor, which has distributed personal protective equipment (PPE) to hospitals and health care providers nationwide throughout the new coronavirus pandemic. The remarks will be available to watch live on the White House’s YouTube page.
As a member of the White House’s COVID-19 Supply Chain Stabilization Task Force, Owens and Minor has partnered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to expand production of PPE since the start of the virus outbreak in the U.S. A statement shared to the company’s website notes that Owens and Minor increased its capacity to manufacture N95 masks by 300 percent this year, as compared to 2019’s output.
Owens and Minor is one of five manufacturing entities that received equipment from the HHS as part of the government’s Project Airbridge initiative to promote widespread dispersal of PPE across the country. The initiative intends to supply roughly 600 million N95 respirators to states across the U.S. over the next 18 months, according to the company.
Several news outlets reported that Trump’s Thursday remarks at Owens and Minor’s Allentown center will concern revitalizing the nation’s medical supply reserve, known as the Strategic National Stockpile. Representatives from the Department of Health and Human Services, one of the parent agencies that manage the reserve, did not reply to Newsweek’s request for comment by the time of publication.
Trump’s visit to Pennsylvania will closely follow contention between the president and Governor Tom Wolf articulated through a series of tweets earlier this week. On May 11, Trump critiqued Wolf’s economic reopening plan for the state, insinuating that the governor’s timeline was too drawn out and associating longer reopening plans with Democratic leaders.
“The great people of Pennsylvania want their freedom now, and they are fully aware of what that entails,” Trump wrote. “The Democrats are moving slowly, all over the USA, for political purposes. They would wait until November 3rd if it were up to them. Don’t play politics. Be safe, move quickly!”
As of Thursday afternoon, Pennsylvania had recorded the sixth-highest incidence of coronavirus cases compared to all other U.S. states, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tracker. At least 62,791 diagnoses have been confirmed since the pandemic’s onset, and 4,276 residents have died.
Responding to Trump’s criticism in his own tweet, Wolf defended Pennsylvania’s reopening strategy, which allows individual counties to resume economic activities based on their diagnosis, hospitalization and fatality rates due to the new coronavirus.
“The dangers associated with #COVID19 may not be readily visible to all, but they are present. We are fighting a war that has taken the lives of too many people. And we’re winning,” Wolf wrote. “The politicians who are encouraging us to quit the fight are acting in a most cowardly way.”
