The Trump administration haphazardly gave away millions of Covid-19 masks — to schools, broadcasters, and large corporations
Hundreds of millions of cloth face masks shipped to U.S. agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private companies by the Trump administration appear to have been allocated in a haphazard fashion, raising questions about inequitable distribution in the effort to beat back the Covid-19 pandemic.
Under the $675 million program, businesses and other entities were provided with supplies of the free, reusable masks that in some cases far exceeded their needs, according to a STAT review of an administration document identifying more than 60,000 recipients. A charter school with roughly 140 students in Florida, for instance, received 37,500 masks. In other cases, corporations with vast resources, including a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, also received tens of thousands of the masks.
