“I want to assure you that our food supply chain is sound,” Sonny Perdue, the secretary of agriculture, said on March 20.

That, however, could change if the people who make, package and deliver food lack personal protective equipment, or PPE, including face masks and gloves, according to the internal document shared with Yahoo News, which provides a daily update on various aspects of the coronavirus response, including details ranging from state-by-state infections to hospital capacity and test sites…

The April 2 briefing warns that the task force had completed an analysis and there could be “commodity impacts if current PPE inventory is exhausted.” There would be shortages of milk within 24 hours and of fresh fruits and vegetables “within several days.” The document estimates that “meat, poultry, seafood, and processed eggs” would become scarce within a period of two to four weeks, while “dry goods and processed foods inventories” — that is, the non-perishables that are pantry staples — could become scarce “as soon as four weeks” after face masks and gloves run out across the food supply chain.