DLA Provides Supplies
The Defense Logistics Agency had stepped into the breach as well, issuing more than 8,000 contracts for a total of $2 billion in response to COVID-19.
“This includes $200 million in medical construction for the mobile military medical hospitals. Medical equipment, lab equipment and testing remain high priorities,” said Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment.
The agency’s efforts enabled procurement of more than 20 million N95 respirators for Department of Health and Human Services and FEMA use. Other PPE provided through DLA included 14.2 million surgical and non-medical masks as well as more than 92 million exam gloves and 2.4 million gowns. The supplies will be used by military personnel as well as a number of other federal agencies.
The DLA has also ordered 8,000 ventilators for use by the DoD and Department of Health and Human Services.
The supply efforts have driven home the challenges of heavy reliance on China for medical supplies and equipment and the need for coordinated federal response to the crisis.
“The nation is going to be battling COVID for six months or a year. I look to DOD as the support in times of national emergency to FEMA and HHS,” said Lord. “They have the infrastructure, they have the overall mission, yet we have a capability to surge 140,000 acquisition professionals to provide the contracting and the program management support to really energize the medical industrial base. We’ve learned we’ve had fragility in it on a number of fronts.”
That “fragility” includes too great a dependence on China, Lord said. “[W]e need to make sure we have security and resiliency in our medical industrial base and we can help HHS to make sure we have both the capacity and throughput that we need not only now but in the future.”
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