LITTLE ELM, Texas — The COVID-19 vaccines are essential to end the global pandemic, but they would be useless without the syringes used to administer them.

Inside the Retraction Technologies Inc. factory in the town of Little Elm, workers and machines are moving 24 hours a day. On the floor of the factory, Director of Operations Larry Salerno pointed to just one of the giant machines that was pumping out tiny plastic components that would soon be a part of the company’s syringes. 

“This machine does about 2 per second. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” said Salerno.

RTI first went into business in Little Elm in the late 90s, and has been a fixture in the community as the town’s grown up around it. The company’s founder created a unique type of syringe called the Vanish Point Syringe which automatically retracts the needle into the plastic of the syringe after the first use—making it unable to be reused.

“If I were fully depressing the plunger: you can see that needle automatically retracts inside the plunger handle,” said Kathryn Duesman, R.N. and vice president of clinical affairs at RTI.

Duesman said the design is ideal for large vaccination sites used for the Covid vaccine rollout to prevent a rogue needle from hurting someone or causing other problems.

Additionally, she said their syringes are made to use every micro-drop of the vaccine inside the syringe.

“We have a low dead-space which means you’re going to get 20% more vaccine out of every dose, and that’s so important,” said Duesman.

Those innovations lead the company to work with the U.S. government during the H1N1 vaccination program in 2009, and now they’re working with the government to provide syringes for the COVID-19 vaccine.

Salerno said the government is even assisting the company in expanding their operation into a second factory floor being built at their Little Elm site.

“So here in the U.S., we’ll be able to make syringes for other epidemics and pandemics that come up like this,” he said.