President Biden
Joe BidenPompeo: Reintroducing an agreement with Iran will make the “less secure” DNC in the Middle East set in motion to push Biden’s struggle to unravel Trump’s immigration rules network MORE is pushing harder and harder to share the U.S. vaccine reserve with the rest of the world.
The federal government has been accumulating doses and has turned its supply into what is likely to become a surplus as the rest of the world struggles with scarcity. The United States has bought enough vaccines to vaccinate every adult in the country three times as many.
Supply is likely to grow.
This week, Biden announced that it had directed the administration to buy an additional 100 million doses from Johnson & Johnson.
The White House said additional doses could be an obstacle to possible manufacturing problems, help vaccinate children or serve as booster doses if they become necessary to fight virus variants.
If finalized, the deal would not be fulfilled until the second half of the year, but it would give the U.S. a total of 200 million Johnson & Johnson shots, enough for 200 million people.
When asked at the White House event about widening the gap between the United States and the rest of the world, Biden acknowledged the global nature of the pandemic, but said his goal is to control COVID -19 first in America.
“This is not something that can stop a fence, no matter how high you build a fence or a wall,” Biden said. “So we won’t ultimately be safe until the world is safe. We’ll start by making sure the Americans are taken care of first, but then we’ll try to help the rest of the world.”
“If we have a surplus, we will share it with the rest of the world,” added Biden, who noted that the United States has already committed $ 4 billion to COVAX, the World Health Organization’s program to distribute vaccine worldwide. world.
On Friday, Biden pledged to work with leaders in Australia, India and Japan to expand vaccine manufacturing and delivery in Asia. The new commitment is aimed at addressing the shortage of vaccines in Southeast Asia.
However, government officials reiterated that the United States will not give any vaccines until the entire U.S. population is inoculated and did not say what threshold the country would set before it plans to export vaccines.
Experts and health advocates worldwide think the U.S. has the ability to give vaccines to other countries without significantly affecting their availability to Americans, but they have been reluctant to make that plan.
“Currently, the world is facing a crisis of access to vaccines and the Biden administration has not yet established a clear framework or timetable for distributing vaccine overdoses while simultaneously vaccinating the national population of USA, ”said Sarah Swinehart, spokeswoman for The ONE Campaign.
The global aid organization UNICEF, which works with COVAX to administer vaccines, has said that countries that have vaccinated their own health workers and that populations at highest risk should share vaccine doses with other countries.
In the US, demand still outstrips supply, but that is starting to change. States are opening eligibility and President Biden said he hopes there will be enough supply for all Americans who want a vaccine by the end of May.
During a speech Thursday evening, Biden said all adults will be able to sign up for the vaccine by May 1 at the latest.
But pressure and frustration among allied countries only grows after the administration says it kept tens of millions of doses of a vaccine made by AstraZeneca.
The Trump administration ordered 300 million doses of the vaccine, but problems related to clinical trials have maintained their authorization and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is still awaiting additional data.
The vaccine has been authorized for emergency approval in the European Union and is the main vaccine used by COVAX in poor countries. But while it has not been authorized in the United States, Biden administration officials said they maintained the supply.
White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients
Jeff Zients Sunday shows preview: Democrats declare victory for COVID-19 stimulus; Vaccination efforts provide hope for summer Five things need to happen for Biden vaccinated people to commit to working with “Quad” countries to expand access to vaccines MORE He told reporters that the United States has a “small inventory” of the AstraZeneca vaccine on hand so it can be ready to distribute it quickly if the company receives FDA approval in the coming weeks.
“We are following exactly the same process we did with the other three vaccines now approved; Modern, Pfizer and J&J,” Zients said.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki
Jen PsakiBiden administration sends FEMA to the border amid influx of migrant children Five things to happen to vaccinate people in the White House face a challenge to overcome the hesitation of the GOP vaccine he said the US has rejected all requests from other countries to share doses of its vaccines.
“There have been requests around the world from several countries that have requested doses in the United States, but we have not provided doses from the U.S. government to anyone,” Psaki said.
Psaki said the administration is trying to cover all contingencies and ensure that Americans put themselves first.
“We want to make sure we have maximum flexibility, that we are overfed and that we are over-prepared and that we have the ability to provide vaccines (whatever they are most effective) to the American public,” Psaki said. “There are still 1,400 people dying in our country every day and we need to focus on addressing that.”