US Awards Medical Supplier $51Mln Contract for COVID-19 Test Swabs - Pentagon

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 31st July, 2020) Puritan Medical Products won a $51.15 million contract to expand capacity at a factory in the US to produce swabs needed to test for the novel coronavirus, the Department of Defense said in a press release on Friday.

"This industrial base expansion effort will allow Puritan Medical to stand up a new flock tip production facility in Maine, increasing their production capacity to 50 million swabs per month by March 2021 to support domestic COVID-19 testing," the release said.

The contract was awarded in coordination with the Department of Health and Human Services and is funded by the CARES Act to expand the domestic industrial base for critical medical resources, the release said.

Flock tip, or flocking, refers to a process of applying adhesive fibers to the swab's surface to enhance sample collection, according to Puritan.

Meanwhile, the departments of Defense and Health and Human Services jointly announced a $24.3 million to Becton, Dickinson and Company to establish and expand domestic production of rapid, point-of-care tests of patients suffering from COVID-19 symptoms using BD Veritor Plus analyzers, a handheld machine the size of a cell phone.

This contract will support the establishment and expansion of test production facilities in the states of California, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts with the goal of scaling-up manufacturing to 4 million tests per month by the end of September 2020 and 8 million tests per month by February 2021, according to a joint press release.