The SNS was involved in providing supplies to the repatriation efforts of State Department employees from China and Japan during the early stages of the COVID-19 epidemic, and shipped thousands of N95 masks to Washington, Massachusetts, and New York states in an effort to respond to COVID-19 "hot spots" as community spread began in the US. It stockpiles a stated 13 million masks, but has placed an order to be fulfilled by September 2021 for 500 million more. Furthermore, the SNS was criticized during the COVID-19 pandemic for containing millions of masks already past their expiration dates. As of March 2020, the national strategic stockpile had 40 million masks while 100 times more were expected to be necessary to handle the pandemic crisis.