The Food and Drug Administration moved quickly to remove substandard masks from circulation after it was determined that they had come in from China from manufacturers that were not reliable and hadn't had their products go through independent test verification, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Tuesday.
"The FDA has, under President (Donald) Trump's direction, been very nimble, very adaptable to meet this unprecedented pandemic," Azar said on Fox Business' "Mornings With Maria" in response to a Wall Street Journal article reporting that the FDA's efforts to shore up supplies resulted in masks of varying quality coming into the United States.
According to the article, the FDA made an emergency decision allowing millions of Chinese-made masks, usually called KN95s, to be imported. However, the masks' quality wasn't uniform and now there are stockpiles of masks that are no longer trusted after they turned out to be subpar. In addition, many of the 3,500 Chinese manufacturers had been only weeks old or had not posted complete mask-quality tests.
"This dates back to March when we were in the throes of the outbreak there in New York and Connecticut and New Jersey," Azar said Tuesday. "What we found was on inspection some of the manufacturers were not reliable and hadn't gotten the independent test verification. FDA quickly removed those products from the market."
Meanwhile, Trump has used the Defense Production Act to ramp up domestic manufacturing capability and raw ingredient production, noted Azar.
The secretary also talked about the president's executive order concerning telehealth services for rural Medicare recipients, noting that the services are beneficial for both doctors and patients.
"Patients find it more convenient, doctors are finding it convenient," said Azar. "The key is they can get paid now for those services, whether it's the phone call, Skype or Facetime, that's a critical difference. We're going to have to have congress step up to plate."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.