INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) — As COVID-19 moved across the globe in January and February, raising concerns in medical centers in the United States, several government agencies were auctioning safety equipment that would soon be desperately needed by hospitals.
A 13News investigation showed the General Services Administration in Denver auctioned off tens of thousands of N95 face masks before it eventually cancelled its most recent auction, retaining the protective gear and sending it to the US Centers for Disease Control and US Department of Homeland Security.
The investigation also highlighted an auction held by the VA’s Northern Indiana Health Care System (VANIHCS) in late January. The auction listing included more than 100 kits full of personal protective equipment that are in short supply for doctors and nurses. According to the detailed auction description on GSA’s auction website, 25 of the PPE kits included powered air purifying respirators (PAPRs) with respirator hoods and breathing tubes. The other 80 kits included gloves, coverall suits, surgical gowns, N95 respirator masks, pullover hoods, boot covers, aprons and face shields.
“Those are the types of things we’ve been asking for and begging for,” said Jean Ross, a registered nurse and co-president of National Nurses United, one of the country’s largest nurses unions.
When 13 Investigates first asked Northern Indiana VA officials why they auctioned off the protective gear, a VANIHCS spokeswoman said the VA “decided to sell a small amount of excess equipment that was procured to be used for Ebola treatment and not typically used for COVID-19.”
When 13News pointed out all the items listed in the PPE kits are used by medical staff fighting COVID-19, the VA then offered a different story.
“We didn’t auction off PPE kits. We auctioned off a small number of items from the kits… Prior to selling these items that were originally found in the kits, we took out essential COVID-19 PPE,” VANIHCS public affairs officer Alex Sharpe wrote in an email to 13 Investigates. She said only the PAPR kits, filters and hoses were sold. (A claim that still angers Ross, who said PAPRs are vitally important for health care workers who are present during high-risk procedures involving COVID-19 patients.)
But an Indianapolis businessman says those revised claims by the VA are not true, and he says he has evidence to prove it.
Emails cast doubt
Wilgues Jean-Pierre was home watching 13News Monday night when he first heard the claims made by the VA. He quickly contacted 13 Investigates to dispute them.
“I don’t believe them, and I was shocked when I saw your piece,” he said.
Jean-Pierre is a licensed auctioneer. He also owns a company that buys and sells government surplus items.
“I basically buy from the government and sell their surplus online directly to customers,” he explained. Jean-Pierre focuses his surplus business on biomedical equipment, so when he saw the Marion VA auction 105 PPE kits in January, he joined in as one of the earliest bidders. As the week-long auction period drew near its closing date and other bidders placed higher bids, Jean-Pierre tried contacting the Marion VA to ask questions about the auction items. He wanted to better understand what was being auctioned to decide whether to increase his bid.
“The day of the closing of the auction, I emailed the custodian and I asked about what’s in there and the quantity. She finally responded … and she was direct about what was in the lot,” he said.
13 Investigates obtained copies of the email correspondence between Jean-Pierre and Rose McCallister, an employee of the Northern Indiana VA system who GSA listed as the contact for the auction.
In that email exchange, McCallister informed Jean-Pierre, “There are eleven total pallets with small, medium, and large” items. She said, “The pallets with Medium PPE Kit have disposable face shields” [sic] and “I will confirm approximate total of 700 boxes when pallets are staged for shipping."
The information provided by McCallister is inconsistent with Sharpe’s claim that PPE items were removed from the auction and only PAPRs, filters and hoses were sold. Jean-Pierre says 20 PAPR kits would not fill 11 pallets and account for 700 boxes worth of protective merchandise, and he told 13News that McCallister never mentioned anything about items being removed during the listing during their multiple e-mails.
“Not once in the emails did she say anything about that,” he said. “There is not one iota of information that would suggest there were omissions or subtractions from this listing.”
Photo raises more questions
Jean-Pierre showed 13News more evidence, which he believes shows the VA sold critical pieces of protective equipment that it now claims were never auctioned: photos the Marion VA sent him just a few hours before the auctioned closed, showing exactly what the winning bidder would receive.
“In order to get those pictures, she had to open one of the boxes because each kit comes in a box, and when you open the box you’ll find gloves, face shield, mask and other small things that come in the box,” he said. “I mean, those pictures don’t lie.”
One of the photos Jean-Pierre showed 13 Investigates includes what appears to be multiple items of PPE displayed on a table, including purple gloves, a blue N95 face mask, a face shield, coveralls and an apron. In the lower right corner of the photo is the date 1/24/2020, the date the auction closed.
Jean-Pierre says he has bid on these types of government auctions for more than a decade, and when items are removed or the listing changes, GSA notifies bidders of any changes.
“GSA themselves would have sent me an email saying ‘We’re not selling them anymore. We’re pulling them.’ If they pull something they will tell you, but they didn’t do that, so it is very unlikely that the VA is telling the truth about taking those items out,” he said. If there are significant changes to an auction, the GSA will also note changes to the status of that auction after it closes, as it did with a February 29 auction of N95 masks that was later cancelled. The GSA did not list any changes to the Marion VA auction on January 24.
This week, 13 Investigates asked VA leaders for proof -- any proof -- to back up their claim that the VA did not actually sell the PPE items listed on the now-closed auction on the GSA auction website. VA officials in northern Indiana and Washington DC have not responded to that 13News request. Reached by phone, McCallister declined to discuss the auction with 13 Investigates.
Internal memo from VA headquarters
Another statement provided last week by the Northern Indiana VA in response to this 13News investigation is also raising questions after 13 Investigates viewed an internal memorandum from VA headquarters in Washington that seems to contradict the statement.
Sharpe, the VANIHCS public affairs officer, told 13News on April 9 that the VA's “Northern Indiana Health Care System is equipped with essential items and supplies to handle an influx of coronavirus cases, and we are continually monitoring the status of those items to ensure a robust supply chain."
That email was sent just four days after Renee Oshinski, VA under secretary for health, sent an internal memo to all VA hospitals nationwide acknowledging they were facing “…localized shortages in facemasks and N95 respirators.”
A copy of the memo viewed by 13News went on to say: “The United States is experiencing challenges procuring adequate supplies of these items to protect Veterans Health Administration (VHA) staff over the coming weeks,” which forced the VA to implement “crisis capacity strategies for mask and N95 respirator conservation.”
Oshinski went on to say the VA supports a recommendation by The Joint Commission, an organization that accredits health care facilities, that now allows health care staff to supply their own masks or respirators to wear at work when needed PPE supplies are not available at VA facilities, and that the VA planned to adopt policies to conserve masks and respirators for employee use.
Government watchdogs say the memo provides even more reason to scrutinize auctions like the one that took place at the Northern Indiana VA. While the amount of PPE auctioned represents just a tiny fraction of the overall protective gear needed by health care workers nationwide, it raises questions about how the federal government coordinated its COVID-19 response, according to Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project On Government Oversight.
“It’s the old case of ‘Does the right hand know what the left hand is doing?’ when it comes to the federal government,” Amey said. “I think there should be a review of what GSA and other agencies knew at the time and how they were handling the crisis.
CDC officials confirmed the first case of COVID-19 in the United States on January 20, four days before the Northern Indiana VA finalized its auction. The GSA told 13News that auctions involving PPE that took place before early February occurred “prior to the declaration of a crisis in the U.S.” and before the agency knew that many types of N95 masks that are commonly used for construction work were also considered acceptable for use in medical settings.
The General Services Administration says it is no longer auctioning off any medical supplies needed to fight coronavirus, and all N95 masks that GSA had in its stockpile have been transferred to agencies that need them.