AdvaMed supports President Biden's COVID-19 strategy in letter

The Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed) has confirmed its support to President Biden to work with the administration’s national COVID-19 strategy.

A letter sent by AdvaMed president and CEO Scott Whitaker to President Biden outlines the industry’s efforts to fight COVID-19 so far. 

“Our companies have been on the front lines in the fight against COVID for the past year. Even prior to government directives, this industry mobilised quickly to ramp up to 24/7 production of the PPE, ventilators, COVID-19 tests, and vaccine supplies our health care system would need to save lives. And we immediately established crucial partnerships with the federal and state governments to ensure that our technologies would go exactly where they needed to go as this virus moved its way unpredictably through the country,” Whitaker writes.

Whitaker continues to highlight how important it is that the medical technology industry and federal government work together in a partnership that “should reflect the reality on the ground and be firmly rooted in our industry’s experience, both throughout this pandemic as well as the 2009 H1N1 outbreak.”

Furthermore, Whitaker discusses the benefits and pitfalls of the Defense Production Act (DPA), which president Biden has instructed agencies to use in order for supplies to be distributed more widely. The Defense Production Act is a law that enables the US government to direct private companies to supply materials to that benefit country’s national defence.

Writing about AdvaMed’s experience with the DPA. Whitaker says: “As an industry, we have had first-hand experience with the Defense Production Act (DPA), which was invoked throughout the course of the pandemic by the previous administration. Due to the breadth of products manufactured by our members, we now have a deep understanding of how it can be an effective tool in some cases and disruptive in others. We have learned that some of the most pressing supply chain challenges throughout the pandemic were less about overall capacity, and more about allocation, distribution, and “last mile” roadblocks. Whether it is providing enough PPE, administering tests to all who need them, or getting vaccines into Americans’ arms, it is critical that we work together to understand the true picture of demand and the various obstacles to delivering these products to those who need them the most.”

That work, Whitaker made clear, begins with “early, open communication and coordination between the companies themselves and our federal partners.”

“We encourage the administration to work directly with AdvaMed as the primary convener for this global industry, but even more importantly, we encourage them to communicate and coordinate directly with the medical technology companies in question before any invocation of the DPA,” he said.

Read the full letter here.