In the past week, the Biden Administration has kept up the pace of issuing executive actions to address the COVID-19 pandemic. The following executive actions are worth noting for their potential impact on the medical product industry’s supply chains:
- On January 26, President Biden announced new steps to boost vaccine supply and increase transparency. In particular, the Administration announced that it will:
- Purchase 200 million additional doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to be delivered this summer.
- Increase overall weekly vaccine supply to states, tribes, and territories from 8.6 million doses to a minimum of 10 million doses for the next three weeks.
- Provide states, tribes, and territories with a reliable three-week supply forecast.
- On January 26, the FDA announced its decision to place all alcohol-based hand sanitizers from Mexico on a countrywide import alert until the agency is able to review the products’ safety. This action was due to a sharp increase in such products from Mexico that had tested positive for methanol contamination and marked the first countrywide import alert for any category of drug product.
- On January 27, during its first press briefing, the White House COVID-19 Response Team indicated that it had identified 12 areas for possible invocation of the Defense Production Act, including the manufacture of masks and tests. The response team also indicated that the option to retrofit factories to mass produce other companies’ vaccine was “under active exploration.” See the Reuters news report here.
- On February 3, the Subcommittee on Health of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce will hold a hearing, “Road to Recovery: Ramping Up COVID-19 Vaccines, Testing, and Medical Supply Chain.”
Please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions about the executive actions or congressional hearing.