Shortages related to the COVID-19 pandemic are pandemic-related disruptions to goods production and distribution, insufficient inventories, and disruptions to workplaces caused by infections and public policy.
The landscape of shortages changed dramatically over the course of the pandemic. Initially, extreme shortages emerged in the equipment needed to protect healthcare workers, diagnostic testing, equipment and staffing to provide care to seriously ill patients, and basic consumer goods disrupted by panic buying. Many commercial and governmental operatons curtailed or suspended operations, leading to shortages across "non-essential" services. E.g., many health care providers stopped providing some surgeries, screenings, and oncology treatments. In some cases, governmental decisionmaking created shortages, such as when CDC prohibited the use of any diagnostic test other than the one it created. One response was to improvise around shortages, producing supplies ranging from cloth masks to diagnostic tests to ventilators in home workshops, university laboratories, and rapidly repurposed factories.
As these initial shortages were gradually remedied throughout 2020/2021, a second group of shortages emerged, afflicting industries dependent on global supply chains, affecting everything from automobiles to semiconductors to home appliances, in part due to China's determination to eliminate COVID-19 from its population by enforcing stringent quarantines and shutdowns, in part by disruptions to goods distribution, and in part by forecasting errors.
Shortages were concentrated in America, Europe, Latin America, and China, while other jurisdictions were much less affected, for a variety of reasons.
Background
Historically, governments were the primary source of supplies for pandemics. Their willingness to maintain large stocks has tended to vary with the severity of the most recent pandemic. For example, in the early 2000s, President George W. Bush increased US pandemic stockpiles. These were depleted in the 2009 swine flu pandemic. The pandemic was seen by the public as mild, which led to a backlash over preparedness spending. National stockpiles of medical equipment were not systematically renewed, in the US or in jurisdictions such as France, which in 2013 moved responsibility for personal protective equipment (PPE) stockpiles to public and private enterprises. The French strategic stockpile dropped from one billion surgical masks and 600 million FFP2 masks in 2010 to 150 million and zero, respectively, in early 2020.
Manufacturing for many types of health-related equipment had moved offshore, seeking lower costs. American mask manufacturer Prestige Ameritech warned for years that the USA mask supply chain was too dependent on China.
Public (World Health Organization (WHO), World Bank, Global Preparedness Monitoring Board) and private initiatives emphasized pandemic threats and preparation. In 2015, Bill Gates began warning about a possible pandemic. This had little impact: WHO's pandemic influenza preparedness project had a million two-year budget, out of WHO's 2020–2021 budget of billion.
In 2018 China experienced a shortage of emergency drugs. In 2019, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board reported the WHO's pandemic emergency fund remained was depleted by the 2018-19 Kivu Ebola pandemics.
As COVID-19 spread in January 2020, China began blocking exports of various medical supplies, including N95 masks, booties, and gloves produced by factories on its territory. Organisations close to the Chinese government began foreign markets for supplies. This limited other countries' access.
Tests
Initial testing shortages were a key factor limiting authorities ability to measure disease spread. Because the virus was new, tests had to be designed, manufactured, distributed, administered, and evaluated from a standing start. The ability to do this varied dramatically across jurisdictions. Germany started producing and stockpiling COVID-19 tests in January 2020.