The White House is flexing its Defense Production Act muscle by using it to ramp up vaccine production, run more COVID-19 tests at home and create more personal protective equipment, officials announced Friday.
Tim Manning, the national supply chain coordinator for the COVID-19 response under President Biden, said the DPA will be used to provide Pfizer with more equipment and supplies so it can dispose of vaccines more quickly.
“Right now, one of the factors hindering increased vaccine production is limited equipment and ingredients,” Manning said during the briefing of the White House COVID task force.
He said the federal government will expand the priority ratings on Pfizer’s supply contracts so they can get the materials for someone else and allow them to take more photos.
“We’re expanding the priority ratings for Pfizer … to produce the COVID vaccine,” said Manning, who previously worked for FEMA.
“It is such actions that will allow Pfizer to ramp up production and meet their targets of delivering hundreds of millions of doses in the coming months.”
Manning said the federal government is also using the DPA to increase the range of rapid at-home COVID-19 tests by attracting six new suppliers who could deliver 61 million tests by the end of the summer.
“The country is lagging far behind where we need to test, especially the rapid tests at home that will allow us all to return to normal activities such as work and school,” Manning said.
Earlier this week, the task force announced a plan to bring the first non-prescription COVID test at home to Americans through Australian company Ellume, and six additional suppliers are now in contract negotiations, which will be finalized in a few weeks. , Manning said.
To reach the $ 61 million goal, the DPA will be used to help the companies build new factories and build new production lines on US soil, “reducing our vulnerability to supply chain disruptions,” said Manning. .
Finally, Manning announced plans to produce more surgical gloves by building factories to produce the raw materials needed for the equipment and then factories to produce them.
“We are already working to increase the availability of N95 masks for frontline workers, but another critical concern we hear over and over again is surgical gloves. Right now we just don’t have enough gloves, we are almost 100% dependent on foreign manufacturers to export our country’s surgical gloves that protect health workers and that is unacceptable, ”said Manning.
“By the end of the year, we will be producing more than a billion nitrile gloves per month here in America. We will now earn enough to meet half of all the US health care requirements in the US here on the US coast. “
Manning said there are additional plans to use the DPA for programs that allow scientists to track COVID-19 variants and see new ones, but more money is needed to get the projects going.
“Congress could greatly aid this effort by approving the US bailout plan,” Manning said, referring to the $ 1.9 trillion stimulus package passed by the Senate on Friday.