ARMY AL&T
time,” Berté said. When the omicron vari- ant hit, for instance, vaccines, therapeutics and enablers could not just continue using the same products they’d been working with to that point. Tey had to adapt by working with the data from the scientific community, drug manufacturers and the FDA and Centers for Disease Control. Te vaccines, therapeutics and enablers team identified which products would be the most useful and closed negotiations as quickly and equitably as possible to main- tain the supply of effective product to the country.
DELIVERING PRESIDENT BIDEN’S ONE BILLION AT-HOME TESTS Another way that JA2 fulfills its mission is supporting HHS to procure screening and diagnostics products. In December 2021, during the week before Christmas, as many government offices were winding down their dockets for the holidays, the White House announced that the govern- ment would put 500 million COVID-19 over-the-counter tests into the hands of the American people for free. Tis was welcome news in the ramp up to the holi- days, particularly for individuals and families who could not access tests. Tis
January, as the omicron variant spread rapidly in the U.S., the president doubled the figure to a total of one billion tests to be made available to Americans for testing in the comfort and safety of their homes.
JA2’s screening and diagnostics team was well-positioned to make these goals a reality, and instead of putting up their out- of-office messages, team members rolled up their sleeves and got to work on behalf of HHS and the nation. Te screening and diagnostics team’s joint project lead, Kevin Pitzer, Ph.D., was put in charge from the outset. Te first problem set tackled was working with HHS and other key stake- holders to establish the requirements before beginning the herculean solicitation and contracting efforts. In his own words: “Requirements are the easy part. Writing the detailed specifications to ensure we acquired the correct tests, however, was the hard part. We went through the docu- ments line by line to ascertain the needs, necessary logistics and language for the request for information [RFI] and contract language.” Under usual circumstances, just getting an RFI together and published takes months. Tanks to strong leadership at the senior level, the interagency require- ment team was able to get an RFI out to
industry partners within two weeks. Tis same pace was maintained throughout each stage of the procurement process.
Previously established partnerships aided the screening and diagnostics team’s lightning speed. By leveraging key relationships, the JA2 screening and diag- nostics team forecast availability in the market, determined the regulatory speci- fications for the tests and identified which companies could potentially deliver the specific capabilities needed. Tose part- nerships included those with the National Institutes of Health’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics initiative, HHS Industry Engagement, HHS Testing and Diagnos- tics Working Group, JPEO-CBRND’s One Network of Excellence for Regula- tory Affairs and Quality Assurance and ACC-JCRD.
On December 30, 2021, personnel were still working hard to get solicitations out. To support ACC-JCRD, Pitzer was personally calling company chief exec- utive officers to keep momentum alive and enable the RFI to be released. Tey did not stop on New Year’s Eve. Teir efforts ensured the RFI was appropri- ately modified and vital interagency
MILESTONE ACHIEVED
One billion COVID-19 vaccine doses have been delivered to the U.S. government. (Photo by Lisa Ferdinando, Office of the Secretary of Defense Public Affairs)
https://asc.ar my.mil
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