The Biden administration, facing calls from public health experts to distribute high-quality masks to the American public, will announce on Wednesday that it is making 400 million non-surgical N95 masks available, free of charge, at community health centres and retail pharmacies across the US.

The move, which officials are calling the “largest deployment of personal protective equipment in US history,” comes just days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its mask guidance to acknowledge that cloth masks do not offer as much protection as surgical masks or respirators.

N95 respirators, so named because they can filter out 95 per cent of all airborne particles when used correctly, were in short supply early in the pandemic. According to the CDC’s new description of masks, well-fitting respirators, including N95s, offer the highest level of protection.

Wednesday was also the formal launch day for covidtests.gov, the administration’s new website enabling Americans to order at-home coronavirus tests free of charge. The site was quietly rolled out on Tuesday.

The administration has come under intense criticism for not moving sooner to distribute both tests and masks to the public, especially as the omicron variant fuels a huge spike in cases. Some public health experts have suggested that the federal government should send N95 masks to every household.

Jeff Zients, President Bidens’s coronavirus response coordinator, told reporters last week that the administration was “actively exploring” ways to make high-quality masks available.

The White House said in a statement on Wednesday that the government would begin shipping N95 masks to pharmacies and health centres at the end of this week, and that the masks were expected to be available at the end of next week. The programme would be in full gear by early February, the statement said.

The masks will come from the Strategic National Stockpile, the nation’s emergency reserve, which was badly depleted at the outset of the pandemic.

New York Times News Service