HHS / SNS Florida PPE

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:

According to a report by Vox, a media outlet, the Strategic National Stockpile received a request for Personal Protective Equipment from the State of Florida asking for "430,000 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 (masks), respirators, and other equipment." According to Vox, the full order arrived three days later on March 13th.

Therefore, we request from the SNS, records sufficient to show for records of any shipped PPEs, tracking numbers, routing or order numbers or similar.

We ask for records sufficient to know how many PPEs where requested, documents to show how many ultimately shipped and how many were ultimately delivered.

Expedited Processing
Pursant to 5 U.S.C. §552 (a)(6) (E) we request expedited processing as we have a compelling need for information. These records relate to a the government’s response a global pandemic, namely Covid-19, or the Coronavirus. Therefore we have reasonable belief that “failure to obtain requested records on an expedited basis under this paragraph could reasonably be expected to pose an imminent threat to the life of an individual.”

Additional Instructions

The requests that all fees incurred in connection with the attached request to your agency be waived, because “disclosure of the information is in the public interest and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester.” 5 U.S.C. §552 (a)(4)(A)(iii). See below for further justification for our fee waiver request.

If any of the material covered by this request has been destroyed or removed, please provide all surrounding documentation including, but not limited to, a description of the action taken regarding the materials and justification for those actions taken. For any documents or portions you deny due to a specific FOIA exemption, please provide a Vaughn Index (Vaughn v. Rosen, 484 F.2d 820, 827 (D.C. Cir. 1973), cert. denied, 415 U.S. 977 (1974)), including a detailed justification of your grounds for claiming such exemption and explanation of why the exemption is relevant to the document or portion of the document withheld.

To the extent that some documents may be exempt under 5 U.S.C. §552 (b), we request that you release you segregate non-responsive documents and release the rest.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter.

I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 10 days, are required by (a)(6) (E).

Sincerely,

Freddy Martinez
Open The Government

HHS,

Does your office have an estimated completion date for this FOIA? We haven't heard from your office in several months and we wanted to check in on this.

All the best,
Freddy Martinez