The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the US Department of Defense (DOD) have jointly awarded an $11.6 million contract to Puritan Medical Products Company, Guildford, Maine, to expand domestic production capacity of Cue Sample Wands, the nasal swabs used exclusively with the covid-19 cartridge-based molecular testing system developed and manufactured by Cue Health, San Diego. The test generates results in about 20 minutes at the point-of-care (POC).
Awarded November 19, the new contract will allow Puritan Medical to expedite upgrades at its Maine facility and increase production capability of Cue’s nasal swabs to 3 million per month by March 2021. These efforts support the federal government’s procurement of 6 million Cue test kits—which include the Cue Sample Wand as well as Cue Covid-19 Test Cartridges—as part of a $481 million contract awarded to Cue October 13 to increase production to 100,000 test kits per day by March 2021. During the week of November 9, HHS began a pilot distribution of the test kits, shipping 27,000 test kits to five states.
Read more about the pilot distribution program from CLP.
For more information, visit Cue Health and Puritan Medical Products Company.
