There may not be a COVID-19 vaccine yet, but the Department of Defense will be ready when there is one -- with $138 million worth of prefilled syringes.
The DoD and the Department of Health and Human Services signed the contract with ApiJect Systems America for their programs “Project Jumpstart” and “RAPID USA." The programs together promise a high-speed supply chain for pre-fillable syringes -- to be filled with the future COVID-19 vaccine.
The program is working to upgrade existing facilities with "filling-line and technical improvements" so that 100 million prefilled syringes can be produced for distribution across the United States by the end of 2020. Jumpstart will begin with facilities in Connecticut, South Carolina and Illinois with the potential to expand to other areas of the country.
"RAPID’s permanent fill-finish production capability will help significantly decrease the United States’ dependence on offshore supply chains and its reliance on older technologies with much longer production lead times," Lt. Col. Mike Andrews said in a DoD news release.
Ultimately, the contract promises a production goal of 500 million prefilled syringes in 2021.
Of course, the timeline of this contract wholly depends on the successful production of a COVID-19 vaccine available for public distribution. And DoD and DHS are taking a gamble that the vaccine will be injection-based rather than oral or intranasal -- although it's taking those possibilities into consideration as well.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during Congressional testimony this week that he had "cautious optimism" one of the various potential vaccines currently in testing would at least show signs of effectiveness in late fall or early winter of this year.
As of this week, about 1.3 million Americans have tested positive for the virus according to the Johns Hopkins data tracker. More than 82,000 have been killed by it.
Within the Department of Defense, approximately 8,200 cases of COVID-19 have been reported. The rate of increase has slowed over recent weeks, with each week resulting in fewer new COVID-19 cases than the last.
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Reach Elizabeth Howe on Twitter at @ECBHowe.
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