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Oregon Gov. Kate Brown today addressed a letter to Vice President Mike Pence in which she urged the federal government to send personal protective gear and additional test kits to Oregon to combat the COVID-19 outbreak.
The letter says the state needs 600,000 surgical masks, 400,000 N-95 respirators, 75-100 ventilators, gowns and gloves, face shields, hazmat suits, and ambulance protection systems.
Brown initially requested these supplies over a week ago, on March 3.
"To date, we have received none of the requested [personal protective equipment]," Brown says in the March 11 letter. "I ask that you move expeditiously to grant this request. We are concerned that as this outbreak intensifies, we will run out of this important [protective gear]."
The letter also asks for more testing equipment, including 96 boxes of collection swabs and 27 boxes of extraction kits.
This request—which Brown says she initially made on March 10—is a reversal from the first letter she wrote last week, where she said the state did not, at the time, need additional testing kits.
"Currently," Brown wrote on March 3, " 1,500 lab kits are stocked and we have capacity to process 80 test kits per day. Therefore we are not requesting additional kits from the [CDC] at this time."
The new letter also requests additional federal funding to assist Oregon residents in the instance that they need to stay home from work or take care of a sick relative. In addition, it asks the federal government to permit people who are isolated or quarantined to have access to unemployment benefits through the U.S. Department of Labor.
Brown is scheduled to hold a press conference tomorrow morning in Portland to talk about new coronavirus response measures. She will be addressing "mass gatherings, social distancing, workplace practices, and other community-wide mitigation efforts," according to a press release. It's not clear what orders she will issue.