HHS announces $646 million contract with Philips to provide ventilators starting in May

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Wednesday that it had secured a contract with medical device supplier Philips to manufacture 43,000 ventilators by the end of the year, with deliveries to begin in May.

In a statement, HHS Secretary Alex Azar announced that President Trump’s decision to invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) to support the contract would “accelerate” production of the ventilators. As many as 2,500 are expected to be delivered to the national stockpile by the end of May.

“President Trump’s bold use of the Defense Production Act is activating America’s industrial base to produce the medical equipment we need to combat the coronavirus. The DPA is allowing the federal government to work with manufacturers, such as Philips, to accelerate production of ventilators and ensure that they go where they’re needed most,” Azar said.

“HHS will continue awarding contracts to companies for which it has invoked the DPA for ventilator production, while we explore every possible avenue to get life-saving supplies to the frontlines of this war on the virus,” he added.

Trump has shown willingness to utilize the DPA to mandate production of ventilators and some other equipment, but has largely resisted using the act to mandate production of personal protective equipment (PPE), such as the masks, gloves and foot coverings that hospitals around the country have reported trouble acquiring.

State leaders for weeks have been forced to compete against each other to acquire ventilators and other equipment, even as Trump has expressed public skepticism at the number of ventilators requested by some states.

“I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you go into major hospitals, sometimes they’ll have two ventilators. And now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’ ” he said on Fox News’s “Hannity” late Tuesday. 

Read more from The Hill:

GM to produce 30,000 ventilators under $500M Defense Production Act contract