By Zain Mookhi ( July 28, 2026, 10:51 AM EDT) -- In early 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments across the globe scrambled to procure large quantities of personal protective equipment (PPE). Sourcing the equipment proved challenging; like the countries in the PPE rush, manufacturers were utterly unprepared for the size and scale of the orders they received, with impossibly short turnaround times....