BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) announced additional pandemic orders for needles and syringes from the United States and Canada totaling 177 million injection devices, according to a press release.
The new U.S. order for 140 million injection devices brings total U.S. orders from BD to 190 million devices. The new Canadian order for 37 million brings total Canadian orders from BD to 75 million devices.
Across the world, BD has received total orders of 330 million needles and syringes from the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. A majority of these orders will be delivered by the end of December 2020 in anticipation of a vaccine being approved late this year or early 2021. BD continues to be in discussions with governments around the world on the need to place orders immediately for early 2021 delivery. The company does not expect these orders will impact BD's ability to fulfill existing customer requirements for needles and syringes, including the annual flu vaccination and childhood immunization campaigns.
"Proactive actions taken by the U.S., Canada and the U.K. to order injection devices now will help these countries be ready to administer a vaccine when one is approved and ready," said Rick Byrd, president of Medication Delivery Solutions for BD. "BD's commitment to manufacture hundreds of millions of needles and syringes for the global COVID-19 response reinforces the company's dedication to helping the healthcare community control and defeat this virus."
In addition, BD announced a $70 million investment to expand needle and syringe production at its facilities in Nebraska as part of a strategic, public-private partnership with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the U.S. Health and Human Services, and the Department of Defense's Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense (JPEO-CBRND), to develop new manufacturing lines for injection devices that will provide priority access to the U.S. government for hundreds of millions of syringes and needles to support current and future pandemic vaccination efforts.
As part of the partnership, BARDA collaborated with JPEO-CBRND to invest an estimated $42 million into a $70 million capital project to further expand BD's operations and manufacturing capacity in Nebraska, where the company has manufactured medical devices for nearly 70 years. The new capacity is expected to be online within 12 months and once completed, the federal government will have priority access to injection devices from these new manufacturing lines to support vaccination efforts for COVID-19 and future pandemics.
