The following statement is attributable to: Susan R. Bailey, M.D., President, American Medical Association

"With COVID-19 continuing to spread rampantly throughout the U.S., we applaud the Biden Administration for taking immediate action today to activate the Defense Production Act (DPA) to ramp up the production of personal protective equipment (PPE), as well as testing and vaccine supplies desperately needed to stem the spread of illness and deaths. We are hopeful that the steps taken today will quickly fix the supply chain issues that have plagued the U.S. for many months--providing health care professionals with the PPE they need to protect themselves, their patients, and families from illness, ramping up testing to identify COVID-19 illness more quickly, and getting the vaccines into more arms.

"Since March, the AMA has called on the federal government to implement a coordinated national strategy and pull every lever to ramp up PPE production for N95 masks, gowns, gloves, as well as testing supplies - and coordinate distribution. We commend the new Administration for moving swiftly to implement a desperately needed national strategy to combat COVID-19, including a health equity task force to address the inequities that have been exacerbated during the pandemic."