Thread by @Uncle_Albert_

Following on from yesterday’s mega thread about #PPE, here’s a little bit more information regarding gloves.

According to a GOSH’s Gloves are off campaign the NHS last year used 1.4bn gloves.

1/?

According to the government they have released 370 million PAIRS to the NHS.

Rubber gloves are usually sold in singles so if we assume gov info is correct then that’s 740 million gloves.

Or approximately 50% of NHS annual usage.

2/?

We need to know for certain whether we are dealing in pairs or singles but that’s 6 months normal usage delivered.

We really need to know how long those will last.

3/?

To put that in perspective total worldwide production is expected to jump to 345bn gloves this year with Malaysia accounting for 65% of that production.

The U.K. as a whole (medical & industrial) accounts for approximately 4.6% of Malaysia’s total exports.

4/?

If we carry the 4.6% U.K. usage though to total worldwide production which last hear was 290bn gloves that means the U.K. demand was 13.34bn gloves.

The NHS alone takes 10% of that, and the gov are saying they have effectively delivered 5% of total U.K. annual consumption

5/?

The question journalist should be asking is how much as a percentage from that 1.4bn glove usage last year demand has risen & then we can see where stand in relation to gloves supply.

It seems to me that the success or failure of the supply of rubber gloves isn’t in the UK’s hands but actually in the hands of President Trump.

Why? Well as you’d expect the US is by far the biggest importer if these products accounting for approx 35% of Malaysia’s output.

Various reports I’ve seen suggest the US is critically short of gloves so given the normal demand of world production any mass increases in US ordering & demand is going to hamper the rest of the world increasing their own purchasing.

To further add to a difficult situation Malaysia was struggling for packaging of these products, further hampering supply.

Last reports were 2 weeks ago with the Malaysian glove association stating there would be huge shortages.

I’ve seen no updates since.

So to put it in perspective the US accounts for almost 100bn gloves out of last years total supply of 290bn.

If their demand increases massively but production only increases (as is forecast) by 16% then the whole world has got a major issue.

According to to an analysis of Malaysian glove production in 2017 this is how glove exports are split by industry:

35% health, pharmacy chemical
20% food industry
16% auto industry
11% machinery industry
18% Others

No one would disagree with medical receiving all production right now, but that leaves a tremendous amount of gloves unavailable for some key industries after we’ve got on top of the pandemic.

What knock on effects will it have when economies try to rebound?

If we drill into the detail of the rubber gloves used we see 35% are health & medical.

That means 4.66bn gloves a year for the health sector in total of which the NHS buys 1.4bn which is 30%.

Hancock’s 700m gloves therefore means an injection equivalent to 15% annual usage.