Medical equipment producers struggle to satisfy local demand amid coronavirus outbreak

As the novel coronavirus spreads, shortages and rising prices for protective medical equipment have become a common problem for many countries fighting COVID-19 disease.

In Ukraine, where the number of coronavirus cases has reached 117 and four patients have died, people are already panic shopping, fearing shortages. Hence, drug stores are running low on medical masks and hand disinfectants.

“There are queues in drug stores, everyone wants to buy them,” said Volodymyr Rudenko, head of the Pharmacy Professional Association of Ukraine. 

The global coronavirus pandemic has caused sky-high demand for protective medical equipment, including in Ukraine. 

As the country’s medical equipment producers struggle to satisfy domestic demand, the government and private companies are taking action. Ukraine has banned exports of protective gear, while clothing and alcohol companies have switched to producing medical products in an attempt to help.

Export ban amid shortages

Before the government banned medical equipment exports on a national level on March 11, relatively cheap Ukrainian protective products were sold abroad en masse, including to Spain, Italy and China.

While pharmacy workers had nothing to sell their customers, the country’s exports of protective products reached 565 tons worth $10.6 million in February alone, twice as high as in September. 

The situation became so critical that some ambulance workers were even forced to use medical masks that had expired a decade ago. In some hospitals, nurses still can’t get necessary protection against the disease they are treating.

As a result, domestic prices have skyrocketed for protective gear, sometimes by 10-20 times. When masks were in stock, pharmacies started asking $1 for the most basic medical mask, which used to cost less than 4 cents. 

Amid such a sharp shortage of not only face masks, but also hand sanitizers, full hazmat suits and even protective eyewear, Ukrainian medical equipment producers claim they are doing their best, but demand is still extremely high. 

On masks alone, demand is already several times higher than the 1.5 million units per year that the country had before the coronavirus began to spread, according to the Pro-Consulting market research company.  

Such a visible shortage finally prompted Ukraine to announce the export ban, which will last until June 6 for all of the 430 Ukrainian medical equipment producers, so that all their work is directed to the domestic market.

“There are things on which money should not be earned – the war and people’s health,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky back on March 13. 

In addition, state alcohol producer UkrSpirt also stopped exporting medical alcohol. Starting on March 20, the state monopoly simplified the mechanism for selling alcohol to private companies for three months, provided they buy no more than 1,000 liters.

“My phone is ringing all the time. Almost everyone needs medical alcohol,” Sergey Bleskun, acting head of UkrSpirt, wrote on Facebook on March 20.

However, despite the export ban, smugglers are still trying to make money selling medical masks abroad, which were the number-one item by export volumes after the coronavirus started spreading and until the ban was imposed.

Just recently, employees of one such company in the southern city of Kherson tried to illegally export 21,000 medical masks worth $40,000 to Israel, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine reported on March 24.

Switching production

Meanwhile, clothing and alcohol companies are switching to producing medical products too in an attempt to help the nation fight the spread of the virus.

Ukraine’s leading fabric company, Textile Contact, has already switched production to medical protective equipment, according to its owner, Oleksandr Sokolovskiy. 

Based in Chernihiv, a city 140 kilometers north of Kyiv, the company began tailoring protective suits, masks and shoe covers. Its capacity will be enough to make at least 50 protective suits and 1,000 face masks per day. 

“Don’t panic, we need to organize ourselves!” Sokolovskiy said. “It is time to understand that, despite political views and preferences, businesses need communication with the authorities, who are currently confused by challenges. Don’t let the chaos and panic destroy the country.”

Fashion clothing brand Aviatsiya Halychyny has decided to produce 4,000 masks a day and, thus, to help the country fill what seems like bottomless demand in face masks — and to help its employees to continue earning salaries. 

“As a company, we don’t make money from this, but it is critically important for our workers to have at least some earnings,” said Yurko Nazaruk, founder of the brand.

Yevgeny Chernyak, the owner of Europe’s largest alcohol holding, Global Spirits, is ready to produce sanitizers for free using the holding’s facilities.

“This is a non-profit project,” said Chernyak. “We take care of all production costs.”

Hospitals in need 

Unlike hospitals in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the Asian epicenter of COVID-19, which were fully equiped with modern equipment and where doctors had enough protective clothing, Ukraine is far from ready to do battle with the coronavirus.

“The world has had an epidemic for three months. What does Ukraine have? There is almost nothing. Hospitals are not equipped,” Victoria Syumar, a lawmaker with the European Solidarity faction, said during the parliamentary session on March 17.

To change the situation, at least five sewing companies in the western city of Lviv will be reprofiled to produce hazmat suits for local hospitals.

According to Galyna Slichna, deputy Lviv mayor for humanitarian affairs, such suits are currently available in hospitals, but they must be changed regularly, so more of them are needed.

But besides clothing for medical workers, Ukraine lacks modern equipment to treat patients with severe cases of viral pneumonia caused by COVID-19.

According to Viktor Lyashko, Ukraine’s top sanitary doctor, Ukrainian hospitals currently have some 3,500 lung ventilator machines to keep patients breathing, 400 of which are in intensive care wards of infectious disease hospitals. 

To compare, Germany, which has one of the lowest mortality rates from COVID-19, has 25,000 lung ventilators and ordered 10,000 more from German company Draegerwerk.

In addition, Ukraine has only 15 special life support machines, which fully replace lung function if needed.

“This is the only chance to save a person’s life when their lungs have completely failed,” said Oleg Musiy, the former Minister of Health of Ukraine.  

Amid the coronavirus threat, state defense production giant UkrOboronProm, has given up its patents on lung ventilation machines, which used to be made by its Kyiv-based Burevesnik Plant some 12 years ago. Currently, the company has debts of nearly $4 million.

Now, UkrOboronProm will give all design documentation to private companies to start producing lung ventilators.

“The whole world is now sharing its solutions, technologies and intellectual property to fight the coronavirus,” said Aivaras Abromavicius, director at UkrOboronProm.