ARMY AL&T
THE NEEDLE
U.S. Army medical acquisition team supplies DOD, nation with syringes for COVID-19 vaccinations.
by Erik Heine
rus pandemic, the U.S. Army has had to respond rapidly to worldwide demand for this tool in unprecedented ways.
A
In early 2020, a small team of highly trained medical acquisition professionals— whose motto is “Nevertheless, we deliver!”—was working within the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense (JPEO- CBRND). It was preparing to supplement the U.S. Army supply of safety needles and syringes to administer COVID-19 vaccinations to Soldiers, once the vaccine was authorized and ready for use. However, a greater challenge loomed on the horizon: ensuring that the necessary needles and syringes would be available to vaccinate the entire nation. While most of the media focused on the efforts necessary to create the vaccines, the underlying goal has always been to deliver those vaccines into the arms of an anxiously waiting public. To do so, the nation needed plenty of safe and effec- tive needles and syringes.
“When the coronavirus hit, we were one of the few who had ever prepared for this type of nightmare,” said Charles Paschal, assistant program manager for JPEO-CBRND’s Joint Project Manager for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Medi- cal (JPM CBRN Medical). “It became clear that the world would be scrambling for needles and syringes on a much larger scale as soon as the vaccines were discussed.”
PARTNERSHIPS AND A WHOLE-OF-GOVERNMENT APPROACH Although the team had never prepared to gather more supplies than DOD needed, it was able to leverage ongoing interagency partnerships in a whole-of-government solution to accelerate the national vaccination campaign, and to rapidly acquire more than 1 billion safety needles and syringes for use throughout the United States. Te
https://asc.ar my.mil 43
modern syringe is a fairly commonplace item. Tis small instrument is a simple mechanism that has provided great benefit to mankind. Te U.S. military has used it to protect warfighters against biological threats for more than 100 years. However, because of the impact of the coronavi-
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