Protective face masks sold at a hardware store | Scott Heins/Getty Images California to spend nearly $1B for 200 million masks per month

OAKLAND — Saying “enough is enough” with states competing for critical medical equipment in the coronavirus crisis, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday that he has inked deals with a consortium of nonprofits and acquired technology that will provide 200 million medical masks a month for his state and possibly others in the U.S.

“We've been competing against other states, against other nations, against our own federal government for PPE — coveralls, masks, shields, N95 masks — and we're not waiting around any longer,’’ Newsom told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Tuesday night.


“We decided enough is enough: let's use the power of the purchasing power of the state of California as a nation-state," he added.

The state plans to spend $990 million in state funds on protective gear, according to a letter Newsom's Department of Finance sent to lawmakers late Tuesday. California must make a down payment of half that amount — $495 million — within the next 48 hours, Finance Director Keely Martin Bosler wrote.

California is cobbling together the initial payment with $188 million in coronavirus funding approved by state lawmakers before they left Sacramento last month, plus $307 million in funds from a state disaster account. It is not clear yet where the additional $495 million will come from.

Maddow called the move a “game changer” in the fight against the pandemic and asked Newsom how he pulled off the deal.

Newsom said that in the last 48 hours, “We just inked a number of contracts in the last few days that gives me confidence to say that … we have secured through a consortium of nonprofits — and a manufacturer here in the state of California — upwards of 200 million masks on a monthly basis. … We're confident we can supply the needs of the state of California, and potentially the needs of other Western states.’’

The names of the specific suppliers have not been released. It is unclear how California's massive purchase may affect the ability of other states and nations to obtain protective equipment that remains in high demand across the world.

The consortium described by Newsom will include three sources to produce a total of 200 million masks monthly: a California-based nonprofit, which is providing a large quantity of masks; a California-based manufacturer with suppliers in Asia; and the third, a technology that the state is acquiring that allows N95 masks to be cleaned as many as 20 times in order to reuse them, sources told POLITICO.

The California governor told Maddow that the move was born out of frustration. “The state of California has distributed 41.4 million masks N-95 masks … and we've received just over 1 million from the federal government.’’

He added: “It’s not an indictment. It's not a cheap shot.’’

But “at the end of the day, they don't have the mass at the national stockpile,’’ he told Maddow. “We were going out getting 5 million here, 500,000 there, 200,000 there — competing against other states, competing against the federal government,’’ he said. “We decided enough of the small ball. Let's use our purchasing power. Let's go at scale.”