The agency awarded more than $562 million from the coronavirus rescue package to a dozen U.S. companies to support domestic manufacturing of supplies such as pipette tips, protective packaging, swabs and reagents used in COVID-19 testing.
“Supporting manufacturing of needed products like these will help strengthen the supply chain for COVID-19 tests, including rapid at-home tests, with the goal of increasing supply and availability of tests that are high quality and easy to use,” HHS said in a news release.
Some of the investments include:
- $192.5 million awarded to Nalge Nunc International Corp., a subsidiary of Thermo Fisher Scientific, to increase domestic manufacturing of pipette tips.
- $6.5 million awarded to US Cotton to increase domestic production capacity for polyester-tipped swabs used in COVID-19 home test kits and mass testing sites.
- $14.7 million awarded to Steripack to boost domestic production of collection vials used for nasal swab tests.
Read the full HHS news release here.
