Fighting the Pandemic
COMPANY OF THE YEAR Puritan Medical Products
GUILFORD, MAINE
The alarm sounded twice on Saturday, March 14. First came a midmorning phone call to Timothy Templet, co-owner of Maine’s Puritan Medical Products, from Brett Giroir, the U.S. assistant secretary for health, who wanted to know how fast Puritan could ramp up production of its nasal swabs. Two hours later, a second call went to Scott Wellman, Puritan’s interim general manager, who was waiting in line for lobster rolls and sent it straight to voice mail. He would soon find out it came from Maine senator Angus King, who was trying to secure Puritan swabs on behalf of his senatorial colleague in Oregon. “All of a sudden, I’m getting a call from a U.S. senator on the weekend?” Wellman remembers thinking. “This is big. There’s a frenzy, a rush starting.”
The reason for the emergency calls was no state secret. It was shot through the morning newspaper: A third NBA player tests positive for coronavirus; President Trump is potentially exposed to the virus by visiting dignitaries; the Maine CDC reveals three new presumptive positive tests in the state. “Clearly,” Templet says, “this was not a drill.”
While the media focused on the spread of the disease, public health officials and medical experts were waking up to how unprepared the nation was for this emergency. Effective vaccines and curative treatments were far off, and
