Thread by @davidmcswane

1/ This company got a $10 million contract for test tubes & gave the gov’t mini soda bottles instead.

The owner shouted at me and slapped my notebook when I asked about it.

Just the latest absurdity we’ve found looking at who the gov’t is paying for #coronavirus supplies ...

2/ We heard from states & Fillakit workers that the company wasn’t actually selling test tubes.

It was selling oddly shaped plastic “preforms” better suited for, say, The Coca-Cola Company. They’re basically mini soda bottles that blow up with heat and air into 2L soda bottles.

3/ They’re too large to be used by standard lab machinery. So states can’t use them.

Even if they were the right size, they’re likely not sterile and could yield false test results.

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

5/ FEMA confirmed it sent these to all 50 states and territories. Quietly, it’s asked if the states can find “an alternative” use for the teeny soda bottles.

So far, FEMA has paid more than $7 million to Fillakit. The contract total is more than $10 million.

6/ As one former Fillakit employee told us: “It wasn’t even clean, let alone sterile.”

(Often employees didn’t wear masks, which could contaminate samples and lead to false positives).

7/ I happened to be in Texas as @ryangabrielson got leaked photos, so I stopped by Fillakit’s warehouse outside of Houston. Tried the front door, was stopped. Requested a tour, was told no. So I just hung out in the parking lot near the company’s loading dock …

8/ After 40 minutes or so an Enterprise rental truck pulled up, a man in a Houston Astros shirt peaked out and looked around. Then the garage door opened …

I pulled out my phone and notepad and walked up …

9/ That’s when I caught a little video of the workers standing over snow shovels and tiny soda bottles, fans whipping around the air and, potentially, contaminants …

10/ Fillakit’s owner, Paul Wexler, Astros fan, was not happy to see me. He shouted, shut the door. I hung out in the parking lot. He peaked out, I waved, and then he steamed toward me. I threw on my mask …

11/ About an inch from my face Wexler screamed in anger. I asked about the soda bottles and unsanitary conditions. He began to defend the bottles, I tried to take notes, at which point he slapped my notebook and continued to scream …

12/ I went ahead and drove away but observed from the road as the team loaded up bags of the plastic bottles into the rental truck. (CDC guidelines call for the test tubes to be refrigerated, and the truck wasn’t).

13/ Wexler declined comment. FEMA said it inspects testing products “to ensure packaging is intact to maintain sterility.”

The agency did not answer questions about the size and lack of sterilization of Fillakit’s tubes or about why it sought an alternative use for them.

14/ Richard Loeb, a contract law expert at the University of Baltimore: “I still am a little bit troubled as to why FEMA accepted them. ... They may have stupidly accepted something that was nonconforming.”

15/ There’s much more in the story here: propublica.org/article/the-tr…

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