Gov. Gavin Newsom’s medical mask deal with a Chinese manufacturer could be canceled after the company failed to obtain a federal safety certification.
Sunday was the deadline for supplier BYD to secure safety certification for its N95 particulate-filtering respirators. But it did not meet that deadline, which had been extended after federal officials denied the company’s previous application.
Katie Shahan, a spokeswoman for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the agency that inspects masks, said Monday there has been no change in BYD’s certification status.
“There are no additional updates at this time,” she wrote in an email.
California’s contract with BYD, or Build Your Dreams, states that the deal is void and the company must forfeit all $495 million that the state prepaid for the N95 masks if it failed to obtain federal certification by the deadline.
Newsom’s administration was silent on the contract’s fate Monday — a deal he cheered less than two months ago as the state scrambled to buy personal protective equipment for medical workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services did not respond to requests for comment about the fate of the deal Monday.
Newsom said Friday that federal officials were “very close” to a certification decision. Then, he downplayed the financial risk to the state.
“We have not spent one penny on anything we haven’t received,” Newsom said.
California wired $495 million to BYD in early April, half the cost of a larger, $990 million contract that also included surgical masks. The company was supposed to provide the state with 300 million of the N95 masks.
But the deal quickly hit trouble: BYD refunded half of the state’s prepayment for the N95 masks last month after it failed to obtain safety certification by the original April 30 deadline. California extended the deadline to May 31.
At the time, Newsom said certification had merely been delayed. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health contradicted him, saying it had denied BYD’s safety certification because of “a number of factors.”
Officials with the federal agency won’t say why certification was denied because government rules prohibit the agency from disclosing such details. However, the agency said a “review of the documentation provided to NIOSH for the design, manufacturing and quality inspection of the device was concerning.”
BYD spokesman Frank Girardot declined to comment Monday. He has said the federal agency had denied safety certification for the N95 masks because of a “documentation control” issue.
The company said its masks have already passed quality tests, including inhale and exhale tests.
BYD is also sending 100 million lower-grade surgical masks to California as part of the deal. The federal government does not need to certify those masks, and Newsom said it has delivered more than 50 million so far.
But the company faces a swift fiscal penalty for not meeting the N95 certification deadline.
Under its contract with California, BYD has until June 5 to refund the state’s remaining $247.5 million prepayment. California officials could decide to extend the deadline again.
“If they do not get the certification that’s required in the contract, we won’t be out a dollar and we’ll find other ways of procuring those masks,” Newsom said last week.
BYD mainly manufactured electric buses until the coronavirus pandemic struck. It then branched into personal protective equipment for medical workers.