Health care workers are showing that they are willing to risk their lives to help others. They shouldn’t have to.

Trump’s announcement comes after some governors cited a lack of swabs and reagents as hampering their ability to conduct more coronavirus tests. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that her state could triple the number of tests conducted if the key components were made available.

But if the United States is truly going to address its mask and ventilator shortage, much more aggressive measures are needed. The executive branch should use Titles III and VII of the DPA to unleash American industrial capacity through purchase guarantees, allowing firms to cover their fixed costs and rapidly scale up production. 

A bipartisan group of senators sent a letter to President Donald Trump on Monday calling for him to “lead a strong, coordinated federal effort to support first responders” by addressing a national shortage of personal protective equipment as the US fights the coronavirus crisis.

The senators wrote, “Specifically, this requires utilizing your authorities under the Defense Production Act to strengthen domestic manufacturing capacity by incentivizing private firms to produce PPE, including respirators, gloves, gowns, and eye protection, and to allocate some of these resources to first responders.”

"The level of anxiety among staff is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” one hospital administrator said. 

Fear underlies our collective experience: we worry that our lack of adequate PPE may spread coronavirus to our colleagues, patients, families and communities, and may also increase our own chances of becoming sick. Each time a healthcare worker gets ill means there is one less person to care for patients.

There is now a robust scientific basis for putting an end to the officials’ anti-surgical mask hysteria and to recommend or even mandate a broad use of masks as in Asian countries that have bent the curve.