Some U. S. makers of medical gloves say the industry needs government support. : Shots

A worker inspects disposable gloves at a factory in Malaysia, a country that has been the top supplier of medical gloves to the U. S. and which is facing increasing competition from China.

MOHD RASFAN/AFP via Getty Images

A 85-foot-tall, dark-gray building stands in southern Virginia, surrounded by grassy fields and rolling blue mountains. This brand-new chemical plant was set up during the pandemic to produce a special type of synthetic rubber that’s needed to make medical exam gloves, the kind used everyday by doctors and nurses.

But so far, this factory has produced nothing.

About 340 miles northeast, in Maryland, another brand-new factory sits idle and unfinished. This one was designed to take that kind of synthetic rubber and transform it into medical gloves. It’s a 735,000-square-foot building full of equipment, but the machines inside of it have not been fully set up.

Zero gloves have been made.

Farther north, a glove factory in New Hampshire acquired four high-speed production lines, so it could start churning out medical gloves quickly. But those lines have not been completely assembled.

That company recently laid off over 100 workers.

Together, these glove-manufacturing projects got about $290 million in public funding, part of a roughly $1.5-billion investment made by the federal government since the start of the pandemic to boost American production of medical masks, gowns, and gloves, plus the raw materials needed to make them.

The goal was to reduce the reliance on imports from Asia and to help prevent dangerous shortages of these essentials from happening again during future health crises.