JUST IN: Biden Administration Giving Away Almost Half a Billion Free N95 Masks to All Americans Who Want Them

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President Joe Biden’s administration has announced that nearly half a billion N95 masks will be given away to all Americans who want them, beginning next week.

The president announced a plan to give Americans “free high-quality masks” during a speech last week, and on Wednesday morning, he made good on that pledge.mIn a statement sent to Mediaite, a White House official said that 400 million N95 masks will be shipped out beginning later this week:

[T]oday, the Administration is announcing that it is making available 400 million non-surgical N95 masks from the Strategic National Stockpile for free at tens of thousands of convenient locations nationwide. This is the largest deployment of personal protective equipment in U.S. history.

To ensure accessing these masks is easy and convenient, the Administration is leveraging the federal retail pharmacy program and the federal community health center program, so that free masks are available at many of the same convenient and trusted locations Americans go to get vaccinated and boosted. N95 masks will be available for the public to pick up at tens of thousands of local pharmacies, as well as at thousands of community health centers across the country. The Administration is starting to ship masks at the end of this week, and masks will start to be available at pharmacies and community health centers late next week. The program will be fully up and running by early February.

This historic step builds on the significant actions the Biden Administration has already taken to increase masking and access to masks: By the end of his first full day in office, President Biden signed Executive Orders to require people to wear masks in federal buildings and land, and on airplanes and trains. Last year, the Administration distributed more than 30 million masks to food banks and community health centers to ensure the highest-risk and hardest-hit communities had access to masks. In addition, Administration has and will continue to make masks available for health care and other essential workers through states. Altogether, we’ve already deployed over 23.5 million masks and respirators to states across the country, including 1.5 million just since the start of the new year.

At a briefing last week, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell was asked “what’s the point of now sending N95 or KN95 masks out to Americans, if a lot of those masks are just single daily use, like, somebody wears it once?”

Criswell replied “Masks save lives, I think, is the important thing here, and we want to make sure that everybody has the tools and resources that they need in order to protect themselves and their families.”

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