The Trump administration ordered $7.3 million worth of test tubes that were supposed to be used for coronavirus testing from a Texas company that sent them unusable soda bottle tubes instead, ProPublica reported.
The company, Fillakit LLC, is owned by a former telemarketer who has been accused of fraud several times, according to the report. Fillakit was formed May 1 and signed a deal with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) six days later.
The tubes, called “preforms,” are designed to expand and contract to package soda bottles. They didn’t fit on the racks when they arrived at the testing site, and would have likely contaminated the testing and caused false results, experts said. Safety standards for laboratory testing equipment are much higher than those used by Fillakit, ProPublica reported.
A top public health scientist in a state that reportedly experienced delays in testing because of the equipment said “they’re the most unusable tubes I’ve ever seen.” (RELATED: Some Insurers Refuse To Cover Precautionary COVID Tests Right Away)
“They’re going to sit in a warehouse and no one can use them,” he added. “We won’t be able to do our full plan.”
The tubes arrived at the Fillakit plant in large buckets and the workers, some without masks, used a snow shovel to scoop them up and put them in a bin to be sprayed with saline. Health Department spokesperson Frank Ameduri said the tubes “were packaged unusually … not in a way we’re used to seeing, and they were not labeled.” Instead of being individually packaged, which is typical for sanitary purposes for lab equipment, they were shipped in loose bags, according to the report.
4/ Fillakit ordered big shipping containers of mini soda bottles & workers used snow shovels to dump them in bins. Then other workers pulled them out and injected saline (which states said isn’t good enough to protect samples) into them.
Some photos obtained by @ryangabrielson pic.twitter.com/Yxeze5tzE7
— J. David McSwane (@davidmcswane) June 18, 2020
FEMA signed a contract with Fillakit to provide 4 million tubes, worth $10.16 million. 3 million tubes have already been sent to all 50 states.
ProPublica reportedly confirmed with 7 states that the tubes were either completely unusable or had not been distributed to testing sites.
FEMA, which receives the supplies directly from Fillakit, told ProPublica that they checked that the packaging was intact, the package slip matches the supplies, and the tubes were not leaking before sending them to the states. It was up to the states to conduct “product validation” inspections to check that the tubes were effective.
FEMA’s decision to partner with Fillakit as a first-time federal contractor comes at a time when coronavirus testing was vital for countries to control the pandemic. An analysis by ProPublica found that the government has spent around $2 billion dollars hiring first-time contractors to make supplies during the coronavirus pandemic, regardless of the fact that many had no experience in the medical supply field.