On Apr. 6, 2020, 3M and the White House announced a plan to import 166.5 million respirators over the next three months to support healthcare workers in the U.S. 3M and the Administration worked together to ensure that this plan does not create further humanitarian implications for countries currently fighting the COVID-19 outbreak, and committed to further collaborate to fight price gouging and counterfeiting.

3M planned to import the respirators primarily from its manufacturing facility in China, starting in April. The plan also enabled 3M to continue sending U.S. produced respirators to Canada and Latin America, where 3M is the primary source of supply.