Manufacturing Expansion of COVID-19 Foam Testing Swabs

ABSTRACT

The outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 caused the demand for foam-tipped swabs, required for COVID-19 testing, to skyrocket. There were only two major manufacturers of foam-tipped swabs worldwide. The only US producer of COVID-19 foam-tipped testing swabs was Puritan of Guilford, Maine with a capacity of < 10M swabs per month. Puritan's existing capacity was nowhere near the 10's of millions needed. The U.S. Government utilized the provisions enacted under the Defense Production Act to award a $73M agreement to Puritan on 23 April 2020 to expand capacity to produce an additional 20M foam-tipped swabs per month. Puritan was faced with daunting supply-chain and workforce challenges to increase their production capability within the 90 day deadline during a pandemic. In spite of the challenges, Puritan met the objectives set by the agreement and delivered the additional capacity on time. © 2022 MANTECH 2022. All rights reserved.