‘EXQUISITELY DEPENDENT’

There’s Major Drama Behind the Only U.S. Company That Makes Coronavirus Swabs

The owners “no longer speak, no longer make joint decisions, and are essentially unable even to be in the same room together.”

The only company in the U.S. that makes the nasal swabs necessary for COVID-19 testing is owned by two cousins who can’t stand each other, according to a Bloomberg report. Timothy Templet and John Cartwright are the co-owners of Puritan Medical Products, a company based in Guilford, Maine that makes the famous, flexible swabs that reach so deep into the nasal cavity as to induce a feeling of tickling the brain. Before the pandemic began, the pair had filed suit to dissolve their joint ownership of the company. “The general partners’ deadlock has created a dangerous situation, leaving the companies close to a point where something is going to break,” the suit reads. “Cartwright and Templet no longer speak, no longer make joint decisions, and are essentially unable even to be in the same room together.”

The two have never been seen on the factory floor together, despite running Puritan jointly for decades. People in Guilford told Bloomberg their beef might have begun with a fistfight, perhaps with the deaths of their fathers. The stakes of the feud are high: The federal government invested $250 million in Puritan past year, and even as COVID testing shifts to rapid antigen tests, Puritan is still poised to profit as the maker of disposable items needed for those tests, too. Admiral Brett Giroir, formerly assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, told Bloomberg, “The world is still exquisitely dependent on Puritan.”