The Department of Defense (DoD), in coordination with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has awarded a $12.38 million contract to Siemens Healthineers, the department reported on Thursday.Â
BARDA funded the award through the Health Care Enhancement Act to support domestic industrial base expansion for critical medical resources.
Under the contract, Siemens Healthineers will work to expand U.S. based industrial production capacity of the DoD’s SARS-CoV-2 antigen test, run on the ADVIA Centaur and Atellica testing platforms.Â
This industrial base expansion effort will allow Siemens Healthineers to increase production capacity of the antigen test at its Walpole, Massachusetts manufacturing facility, increasing production capacity from 8.25 million to 50 million tests per month by July 2021, to support domestic COVID-19 testing.Â
The DoD’s Defense Assisted Acquisition (DA2) Cell led the effort in coordination with the Department of the Air Force’s Acquisition COVID-19 Task Force. DA2 has assumed the interagency efforts for COVID-19 medical resource acquisition previously coordinated by the DoD’s Joint Acquisition Task Force (JATF).
At the beginning of the COVID-19 national health emergency, Hon. Ellen Lord, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment and 2020 Wash100 Award recipient, established the JATF to synchronize the acquisition execution of DoD’s support to interagency requests for COVID-19 medical resources.
Under DA2, the DoD also awarded a $6.98 million Firm-Fixed Price contract action to Teel Plastics in Oct. 2020 to expand US-based industrial production capacity of injection-molded and extruded swabsticks used in the production of COVID-19 testing kits.
The contract will increase Teel Plastics’ production capacity by approximately an additional 50 million per month for each swabstick type by March 2021, to support domestic COVID-19 testing.
