New HHS report touts medical supply chain, industrial base gains over past year

The beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic were a fraught time for the medical supply chain, but a new report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notes that significant gains were made by the United States health supply chain and industrial base over the last year.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed just how vulnerable the U.S. supply chain and U.S. manufacturing were in years past. Our reliance on manufacturing overseas created significant medical supply shortages for health care workers and put the health and security of the American people in danger,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said. “The Biden-Harris Administration, working with private industry, has made great strides in addressing these inherited challenges, for example, quadrupling the monthly supply of at-home COVID-19 rapid tests in the United States to ensure students and workers arrive healthy to schools and their places of employment.”

The changing picture included some $250 million invested by HHS into U.S.-based manufacturing of personal protective equipment and $950 million into manufacturing the supplies and equipment required by vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostic tests. It is already having real-world effects, with more than 685 million vaccine doses dispatched to 90,000 vaccination sites nationwide, in addition to President Joe Biden’s program to deliver up to 500 million free COVID-19 tests directly to homes through the United States Postal Service.

Further, in contrast to the shortage of masks at the beginning of the pandemic, the HHS has shipped millions of N95 masks to pharmacies and community health clinics over the last year. This is particularly important, given the rise of COVID-19 variants like Omicron that rendered traditional masks less effective.

“Over the past year, as a result of strong collaboration between public and private sectors, we’ve significantly increased U.S.-made PPE, tests and diagnostic devices, therapeutics, vaccines, and the active pharmaceutical ingredients to make them,” Dawn O’Connell, HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, said. “For example, in January 2021, the U.S. had no over-the-counter antigen tests, and today we have hundreds of millions of tests per month, with an anticipated capacity to produce over 1 billion a month beginning in March.”

These things have been made possible through the mix of funding, use of the Defense Product Act, reallocated resources, and partnerships with the private sector.