Federal regulators responsible for the safety of the U.S. drug supply are still struggling to get back to where they were in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic upended factory inspections in the U.S. and across the world, The Associated Press has found.
An AP analysis of Food and Drug Administration data shows that agency staffers have not returned to roughly 2,000 pharmaceutical manufacturing firms to conduct surveillance inspections since before the pandemic, raising the risks of contamination and other issues in drugs used by millions of Americans.
The firms that are overdue for safety and quality inspections represent about 42% of the 4,700 plants that are currently registered to produce drugs for the U.S. and previously underwent FDA review before May 2019, the AP found. The plants make hundreds of critical medicines, including antibiotics, blood thinners and cancer therapies.
A lot of the people that did inspections like that likely retired because of the pandemic, there’s a huge loss of institutional knowledge that’s happening out of view in so many fields.
I work at a college.
Our facilities department went from being under staffed with 10 employees, to having only 3 because everyone retired.
I’m in the trades, so I thought about applying for part time with them as a way to get some extra cash. But even though I am qualified to train people in my trade, I am apparently unqualified to do the work they want. The only listings that have are for people with 15 years experience and engineering degrees.
To primarily change air filters, light fixtures, and swap electric motors.