New Defense Department orders for ventilators will be shipped within days, the Pentagon says, as part of four contract extensions inked over the weekend that will deliver 1,400 ventilators by early May.
“This will be a time-phased delivery over the next several months,” Lt. Col. Mike Andrews said Saturday. “Delivery locations will be determined by FEMA.”
Andrews informed the Washington Examiner that the four companies are Zoll, Combat Medical, Hamilton Medical and VyAire.
The Defense Logistics Agency modified existing contracts with the four vendors to secure a deal for 8,000 ventilators worth $84.4 million, the DOD detailed.
Gen. Herbert Carlisle, CEO of the National Defense Industrial Association, told the Washington Examiner on Friday that the DOD leveraging new Defense Production Act authorities means that more contracts will be on the way in short order.
“Companies are coming forward,” he said. “We’re doing a lot of the work within NDIA and getting all the companies that have the ability to produce things that the nation really needs right now.”
On Friday, President Trump used the DPA to order General Motors Co. to start producing ventilators after spending the prior two weeks waiting on companies to self-select.
The Defense Department is coordinating the acquisition with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The department created a “joint acquisition task force” on March 20 to align acquisition authorities across the services to tap into the thousands of existing contracts and relationships. Saturday’s announcement stems from that effort.
“Two weeks of discussion set in motion all these actions, all this cooperation,” Carlisle said in a statement following the DOD announcement.
DPA Title III authorities, Carlisle told the Washington Examiner, provided more upfront money and cash injections to help some defense companies make the adjustment to produce for civilian medical needs.
“They’re going to take advantage of that Title III to go out and find out what industry is doing and when they’re needing money, [capital expenditures] to expand capability,” he explained, referring to how the companies will use government dollars to ramp up or modify production.
Andrews said that several thousand contracts have already been signed, in addition to support for the two Navy hospital ships and Air Force flights to deliver test kits.
“The department continues to partner with industry to retool and re-mission production lines to manufacture masks, gowns, ventilators, and other critical personal protective equipment,” he said.
Assistance to the hospital ships USNS Mercy, now docked in Los Angeles, and USNS Comfort, which set sail Saturday for New York, includes $2 million in pharmaceuticals and medical supplies, 975,000 gallons of fuel, food, and repair parts. The hospital ships will provide extra trauma beds to local hospitals in order to open bed space to care for COVID-19 patients.
Six C-17 military flights have also delivered 3 million COVID-19 test kit swabs — with more flights delivering additional test kits scheduled for this week.
