The Food and Drug Administration is blocking an Ohio company’s lifesaving technology. Columbus-based Battelle Labs created a machine that can sterilize up to 80,000 surgical masks per day. This would allow healthcare workers to reuse masks. Masks and other PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) are in desperately short supply during the Coronavirus outbreak. The FDA is only granting permission for the company to sterilize 10,000 masks a day.
Battelle has two machines ready to go in Ohio. Ohio Governor MIke DeWine said yesterday that the company would be able to sterilize 160,000 masks daily in the state. There are also additional machines ready to be deployed to Washington State, New York City, and Washington D.C. Fifteen additional lifesaving machines would have been ready to go by the end of the week. The ruling does not allow Battelle to send machines to other states.
At Saturday’s COVID-19 press conference, the governor took the unusual step of publicly begging the FDA to grant approval. “I want to make a public appeal to the FDA,” he said. “Please, please give us the approval to use these.”
Elective surgeries, dental work, and veterinary procedures have been postponed in Ohio to conserve PPE. Governor DeWine issued a public plea yesterday for Ohio companies to manufacture PPE if they can.
DeWine blasted the FDA over the ruling. “The FDA’s decision to limit the use of this lifesaving technology is nothing short of reckless. The FDA has chosen not to support those who are risking their lives to save others. This is a matter of life and death. I’m not only disappointed by this development, I’m stunned the FDA would decline to do all it could to protect this country’s frontline workers in this serious time of need.
DeWine vowed that he and Lt. Governor Jon Husted would keep fighting to have the technology approved.
