On January 8, 2021, the Department of Defense (DOD), in coordination with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), awarded $110 million to Puritan Medical Products to procure production equipment necessary to increase domestic production capability of foam tip swabs used in critical COVID-19 diagnostic tests.
The global increase in COVID-19 cases continues to impact diagnostic test manufacturers and the supply chains that support specimen collection and testing performance. This industrial base expansion effort, with a not-to-exceed value of $110 million, will allow Puritan to procure the production equipment necessary to increase production capacity by 200M foam tip swabs per month by September 2021, to support domestic COVID-19 testing.
The DOD’s Defense Assisted Acquisition (DA2) Cell led this effort in coordination with the Department of the Air Force’s Acquisition COVID-19 Task Force (DAF ACT), on behalf of HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH). This effort was funded through the Health Care Enhancement Act (HCEA) to support domestic industrial base expansion for essential medical resources.