50 U.S. companies respond to Trump’s appeal to fight virus

FPI / April 2, 2020

“The private sector is responding to President Trump’s call to step up and help combat the coronavirus,” the White House said in a March 31 statement.

Some 50 companies have answered President Donald Trump's call for help, including Facebook, Anheuser-Busch, Ford, Fiat Chrysler, and Toyota. “While by no means comprehensive, these are some notable examples of the private sector stepping up,” said an administration official.

The companies are stepping up voluntarily and "were not pushed into action by the government or threat of the Defense Production Act," Washington Examiner columnist Paul Bedard noted.

Additionally, many other national and local groups have "brought in corporate partners to help find masks, gowns, and other personal protective equipment," Bedard noted.

The National Sheriffs’ Association told Bedard that its members have received tremendous help from Home Depot, Grainger, and Staples, and that a half-dozen national restaurant chains have offered to help.

Their pleas for help have been “enthusiastically welcomed” by some top corporations, said National Sheriffs’ Association Executive Director and CEO Jonathan Thompson. “What they are doing is more than impressive. It’s heartening.”

In his daily coronavirus briefings, Trump routinely highlights corporate partners he says are "fulfilling their patriotic duty" amid the ongoing crisis. Some media outlets, including CNN, have stopped covering those portions of the daily briefing.

Officials provided Bedard the following representative list of business partners and some of the things they are doing:

• Ford, 3M and GE Healthcare are collaborating to increase the production of ventilators and personal protective equipment. The Ford-GE plan is to produce 50,000 ventilators within 100 days and up to 30,000 a month thereafter. With 3M, it will make more than 100,000 face shields per week.

• Toyota is using their facilities to produce face shields and collaborating with medical device companies to speed up manufacturing of vital medical devices. It is also helping local organizations and nonprofits with ‘in-kind’ donations, plus utilizing several of the company’s North American facilities to fabricate face shields while collaborating with medical device companies to speed the manufacture of ventilators, respirators and other vital devices for hospitals.

• General Motors is manufacturing respiratory masks and working with Ventec Life Systems to mass produce ventilators.

• Fiat Chrysler is manufacturing and donating more than 1 million protective face masks a month.

• Honeywell has doubled their production of N95 masks and intends to increase its capacity fivefold within the next 90 days. The firm is also starting another plant in Arizona and will hire 500 employees.

• 3M doubled their global output of N95 respirator masks and plans to make 100 million a month.

• MyPillow has dedicated 75 percent of its manufacturing to produce up to 50,000 masks a day.

• Hanes has agreed to use its manufacturing facilities to help produce medical masks.

• Jockey International is producing isolation gowns and donating scrubs to medical workers at the Javits Center in New York. They plan to deliver up to 50,000 gowns a week.

• Ralph Lauren announced that they would work with their manufacturing partners to produce masks and isolation gowns.

• Brooks Brothers is using its facilities to produce 150,000 masks per day.

• Bauer said it will re-purpose its factories to begin making face shields.

• Under Armour said it will make 500,000 masks, 1,000 face shields, and thousands of hospital gowns.

• HP is utilizing 3D printing to produce equipment.

• Facebook donated over 700,000 masks and is working to source millions more to donate.

• Apple donated millions of N-95 masks to healthcare professionals and worked with the administration to develop an app to allow users to screen themselves for coronavirus symptoms.

• Tesla purchased and donated more than 1,000 ventilators.

• SpaceX is making hand sanitizer and face shields for local hospitals.

• Lockheed Martin donated use of their corporate aircraft and vehicle fleet for medical supply delivery, and is donating the use of their facilities for crisis-related activities.

• Boeing will print 3D face shields for healthcare workers and offer its Dreamlifter aircraft to help coronavirus response efforts.

• United Technologies donated 90,000 pieces of personal protective equipment to FEMA, and announced that they will begin to manufacture face shields.

• Pernod Ricard is re-purposing its spirits production facilities to help produce hand sanitizer.

• Anheuser-Busch is working to produce hand sanitizer and has offered its facilities to the American Red Cross to host blood drives as part of a $5 million donation to the group.

• Bacardi is producing ethanol required to make hand sanitizer.

• Bayer, Novartis, and Teva Pharmaceuticals donated millions of doses of hydroxychloroquine.

• Johnson & Johnson has partnered with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to commit more than $1 billion to co-fund vaccine research, development, and clinical testing.

• Procter & Gamble is ramping up its production capacity for hand sanitizer, and is working to produce face masks.

• Medtronic is increasing its production of ventilators, announcing that they are on track to double their capacity to manufacture and supply ventilators.
Multiple healthcare distributors and supply chain companies are collaborating with FEMA as part of “Project Airbridge” to airlift critical medical supplies. The project includes Cardinal Health, Atlas Air, and UPS.

• UPS is also deploying protective equipment and test kits throughout the country.

• FedEx Express launched a special operation to help the federal government quickly move coronavirus test specimens from over 50 remote drive-thru testing centers across 12 states.

• McLane Global Logistics is partnering with USDA to deliver food to children.

• Panera Bread is partnering with USDA to serve meals to children throughout Ohio, with plans to expand the program across the country.

Free Press International