PORTLAND, Maine (AP) A Maine-based company that’s one of only two manufacturers of a specific type of swab needed for COVID-19 tests is opening a production facility in Tennessee, officials said.
The Puritan Medical Products plant would be the first outside Maine, but the company had no details on where it would be located or when it will open, spokesperson Virginia Templet told the Bangor Daily News.
The company currently has three plants in Maine.
The federal government has provided the company hundreds of millions of dollars since the start of the pandemic as the government rushed to ramp up COVID-19 testing last year.
Puritan, which is based in Guilford, opened two plants in Pittsfield last year. One was helped by $75.5 million in funding from the Department of Defense, while $51.2 million in coronavirus relief funding helped launch another plant.
In January, the federal government awarded it $110 million to purchase production equipment necessary to increase swab production.
Last June, then-President Donald Trump visited the company’s headquarters to praise the workers. The only other company that makes the specific swab is in Italy.
