[levpopov]

The US does not even need to ramp up PPE production. Mask availability is good outside of the US, but you don't know if you are importing a fake one, unfortunately. This is solvable.

What's needed is additional certification labs and US-based quality control for imported N95/KN95 masks. It is very cheap to set up a new lab - all you need to test a mask is a ~$1000 sub-micron particle counter. Just keep buying samples of masks from various manufacturers and make sure they are not slipping on quality.

3M and Powecom now offer one-time-use authenticity code for masks they ship (see https://safeguard.3m.com) and other manufacturers will likely follow soon. This means that you don't have to worry about the middlemen doing importing and distribution swapping the product for counterfeit - all you need is a quality reputation score for manufacturers themselves, making the problem much easier.

This is of course should've all been done by the CDC and US Customs already but they are dropping the ball and doing only a limited amount testing. Maybe universities can step up and use their labs for testing?

--- Additional PSA for people reading this thread: you can buy reputable-looking KN95 masks from Office Depot(!) right now. It's an ear-loop design which is not ideal, but you could fix the rubberbands yourself easily.

[sharkmerry]

Kn95's are being tested it seems, and they are failing..

─ ECRI testing of imported FFRs has revealed that 60-70% provide only sub-95% filtration performance. ■ This trend aligns with what NIOSH has found through their own testing; as of September 2, 2020, 53% of the 358 FFR models tested did not meet N95 filtration requirements

https://assets.ecri.org/PDF/COVID-19-Resource-Center/COVID-N...

[levpopov]

Thanks for linking to the report, it's interesting reading.

I think it largely confirms the point of my post though - we need independent certification labs in the US to make imported PPE usable. It is unclear what % of reported quality failures in that report were due to counterfeits. Now that the manufacturers have authenticity codes on their product we can hold manufacturers directly accountable for filtering performance.

[sharkmerry]

> I think it largely confirms the point of my post though - we need independent certification labs in the US to make imported PPE usable. It is unclear what % of reported quality failures in that report were due to counterfeits. Now that the manufacturers have authenticity codes on their product we can hold manufacturers directly accountable for filtering performance.

I agree, but we've seen that be corrupted by profit-seeking