(Reuters) – Becton Dickinson and Co said on Thursday it had added manufacturing lines for safety injection devices at its facility in Nebraska, boosting supply of syringes as the United States heads into the flu vaccination season while administering COVID-19 jabs.
The $70 million expansion was supported by a $42 million investment by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority in July last year, as the U.S. government sought to secure priority access to “hundreds of millions of injection devices” to support vaccination efforts for COVID-19.
“With millions of lives at stake, we do not have time to wait for supplies to be shipped from other countries,” Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, was quoted as saying in a statement released by Becton Dickinson.
The world’s largest maker of injection devices did not provide details on the exact number of additional syringes it will be manufacturing after the expansion.
(Reporting by Leroy Leo in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
