The US military signed a deal worth more than $130 million to deliver personal protective equipment to medical personnel at 15,000 nursing homes, Defence Department Spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Mike Andrews said in a statement.
“The Department of Defence’s Defence Logistics Agency [DLA], in coordination with FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and the Centres for Medicare & Medicaid Services has signed a $134 million contract award with the Federal Resources Supply Company to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) kits”, Andrews said on Wednesday.
The equipment will include 1.2 million goggles, 64.4 million pairs of gloves, 12.8 million gowns, and 13.8 million masks, the release added.
Deliveries of the supplies have already started this week in New York, New Jersey, Washington DC, Baltimore, and Philadelphia and will be completed across the United States, Puerto Rico, and Guam by the end of June, the spokesperson added.
On 13 May, the US government signed a $138 million contract with a syringe and injector-making company ApiJect Systems America to boost domestic production capacity in making devices to deal with the coronavirus crisis.
On Monday, Aerospace giant Boeing shipped over 150,000 goggles and face shields from China to the United States to help US state of South Carolina health workers in fighting the pandemic.
As of 13 May, the United States has over 1.364 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and almost 82,250 deaths caused by the disease, according to data assembled by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
