Why You Can't Find An N95 Mask Despite Plenty For Sale▼

Amy Chan has been trying, and failing, to get N95 respirator masks for her family since hearing about new variants of the coronavirus. "I thought to myself, OK, there's this new strain, it's super contagious," said Chan, a Phoenix mother of two boys. "I need more than just a cloth mask. Where do I find an N95?" Two states away in Texas, Michael Bowen has a warehouse full of N95s with nowhere to go. "We are stacking them in the aisles now," said Bowen, executive vice president and partner at Prestige Ameritech. The Texas company manufactures and ships millions of masks to hospitals, dentists and nursing homes, but also is now able to make far more N95s than they have orders to fill. "I need to sell 5 million respirators more a month or I need to shut down manufacturing of some respirators," Bowen said. The masks can filter 95 percent of airborne particles. There was a shortage in hospitals last spring, but not anymore, according to manufacturers and distributors that talked to Newsy. Source