As coronavirus cases in the U.S continue to surge and the overall case count creeps toward 10 million, many healthcare facilities are experiencing new shortages of N95 masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE), according to the Wall Street Journal and other reports. Those shortages have not necessarily had an impact on the promotional products industry, distributors said.

Many healthcare facilities are rationing and reusing masks, and even those that don’t are having trouble stockpiling equipment. In Michigan, the Journal notes, nearly two-thirds of health systems report less than a three-week supply for various types of protective gear; the state’s health department recommends a 90-day supply.

The shortages come despite manufacturers ramping up production. 3M, parent company of Top 40 promotional products supplier 3M/Promotional Markets (asi/91240), is on track to produce around 100 million masks a month in the U.S. this year, which is four times higher than what it made prior to the pandemic, according to WSJ.

“N95s are still in high demand,” 3M Chief Executive Mike Roman told the Wall Street Journal. “We have more demand than we can supply.”

There are many manufacturers working to meet that demand, however. Companies including BYD, Makrite and Harley have NIOSH-approved N95s readily available for distributors, according to Kimberly Fulford, PPE product manager for Top 40 distributor Proforma (asi/300094).

Honeywell International is producing 20 million N95 masks a month in the U.S. Other manufacturers are also stepping up to add to supply. The WSJ notes that WellSpan Health, a Pennsylvania hospital network, recently won approval to start making 500,000 N95 masks this month with a local manufacturer. And Lloyd Armbrust, an entrepreneur in Austin, TX, raised over $5 million for a mask-making company. He’s working to get approval to make N95s and has already sold $8 million of surgical masks.

“Selling masks during a pandemic is not that difficult,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

Experts have also pointed to a looming shortage of nitrile gloves for healthcare workers on the front lines. There’s a global shortfall of more than 200 billion of the synthetic rubber gloves, according to NBC News.

“Gloves are just needed everywhere,” Mary Denigan-Macauley, the director of healthcare at the Government Accountability Office told NBC.

Nitrile gloves are the only PPE item that are somewhat hard to find right now, according to Chris Faris, CEO of Boost Promotions (asi/142942) in Gloucester, MA.

Some of the healthcare industry shortages could be affected by internal bureaucracy, speculated Ed Levy, president of Edventure Promotions (asi/186055) in Chicago. “There’s so much red tape even in their own networks,” he said, adding that bottlenecks can occur because there are often only one or two people able to make purchase orders within an organization.

Fulford noted that Proforma has seen less demand for PPE from hospitals and large medical buying groups in recent months because the traditional, medical supply companies have recovered their inventories. Civilian and small medical organizations, however, continue to have consistent demand. “While medical gowns and mask demand has weakened, civilian masks – both reusable and disposable – continue to dominate sales in the PPE channel for promotional products distributors,” she said. “We also consistently see the demand for wipes, hand sanitizers and nitrile gloves.”

Howard Potter, owner of Utica, NY-based distributorship A&P Master Images (asi/102019), said his company is running into inventory shortages, but only tangentially related to PPE. Many apparel suppliers have repurposed their T-shirt stock, converting it into fabric masks, meaning it can sometimes be more challenging to source traditional apparel items.

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