It appears that the US authorities' efforts to combat the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic have been bolstered by the US military which has moved to help supply the country with more respirator masks.
The Pentagon is going to spend some $133 million on ramping up the domestic production of N95 masks by over 39 million over the next 90 days, Lt.Col Mike Andrews said in a statement.
This move was apparently conducted under the Defense Production Act, a law approved back in 1950 which grants the US president president "the power to expand industrial production of key materials or products for national security and other reasons", as cited by Reuters.
The companies that will be involved in this undertaking are expected to be identified by the Pentagon when the contract is awarded, Andrews added.
The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States has recently surpassed the half-million mark, with the number of deaths at over 20,000.
Since its emergence late in 2019, the new coronavirus has since spread across the world, infecting people on all continents (except Antarctica, apparently) and being declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization.