WASHINGTON – When President Joe Biden last week promised to collect enough vaccine by the end of May to inoculate all adults in the United States, the statement was hailed as a triumphant acceleration of a vaccination campaign that seemed to be wavering just a few weeks earlier.
And it is true that the production of two of the three federally authorized vaccines has accelerated in part because of the demands and guidelines of the new president’s coronavirus team.
But the announcement was also a triumph of another kind: public relations. Since Biden had contained expectations early on, the faster schedule for producing the vaccine evoked the image of a White House running on all cylinders and leaving the effort of its predecessor behind.
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A closer look at the increase announced last week offers a more confusing picture, in which the new administration has expanded and expanded a vaccine production effort whose key elements were in place when Biden took over as President Donald Trump. Both administrations deserve credit, although neither wants to give much to the other.
The Biden administration took two important steps that helped to accelerate the production of the vaccine in the short term. Even before Biden took office, his advisers determined that by invoking the Korean War-era Defense Production Act, the federal government could help Pfizer obtain the heavy machinery it needed to expand its Kalamazoo, Michigan plant. . The Trump administration has repeatedly invoked this law, but its order for Pfizer covered only single-use supplies, such as plastic liners, and not durable factory equipment.
Crucially, Biden’s top advisers led another vaccine maker, Johnson & Johnson, to force a major subcontractor to operate 24 hours a day so that his vaccine could be bottled more quickly. This company had fallen behind in the production goals set out in its federal contract. Only after Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House’s top pandemic advisor, and Dr. David Kessler, who oversees the vaccine effort, demanded that the company commit more resources, did it publicly pledge to meet a crucial deadline in May.
At a vaccine “dome” at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, Biden will announce that he plans to guarantee 100 million additional doses of Johnson & Johnson’s single injection vaccine by the end of this year, with the goal of having enough to vaccinate children and, if necessary, administer booster doses or reformulate the vaccine to combat emerging variants of the virus.
At the same time, however, Biden benefited enormously from the waves of vaccine production that the Trump administration had started. When Pfizer and Moderna found their manufacturing base, they were able to double and triple production at their factories.
Biden had been in office for less than a month when Moderna announced that it could deliver 200 million doses by the end of May, a month ahead of schedule, simply because it had become faster in production. Pfizer was able to save even more time by postponing the delivery schedule for its 200 million doses in two full months, partly because of the new efficiencies found and partly because it received credit for six doses per bottle instead of five.
All of this allowed Biden to announce that his government would have enough doses on hand by the end of May to cover all 257 million adults, two months earlier than he had promised just weeks before. His advisers noted that on Sunday, the country reached a daily record of 2.9 million shots, three and a half times more than on the day of the inauguration.
“Throughout our response, we have provided clear schedules based on the authorized vaccines available,” said Kevin Munoz, assistant press secretary for the White House. “We do not plan to just meet these deadlines, but to exceed them.”
For advisers to the Trump administration, the exaltation of the new president sounds out of tune. Biden is proclaiming victory over his predecessor’s achievements, while mumbling erroneously about a mess he says he inherited, they say.
“They criticize what we did, but they are using our manual every step of the way,” said Paul Mango, deputy chief of staff of the Trump administration for health policy and a senior officer in the then-known accident vaccine development effort. as Operation Warp Speed. He said the Trump team oversaw the construction or expansion of nearly two dozen factories involved in vaccine production and invoked the Defense Production Act 18 times to ensure that those factories had sufficient supplies.
The Biden team is “maintaining a very good track record,” said Mango. “But don’t criticize us for improving your appearance.”
Still, corporate, state and federal officials agree that the Biden White House has been more active than its predecessor in trying to increase the country’s vaccine supply.
The new management’s relationship with Pfizer is remarkably better. Trump and his aides accused the company of delaying the development of the vaccine to undermine Trump’s reelection candidacy. The company announced that its vaccine was highly effective on November 9, almost a week after election day, and then filed for emergency use authorization on November 20.
Pfizer officials in particular suggested that the Trump administration was not only speaking ill of the company, but also for months refused to invoke the Defense Production Act to order suppliers to prioritize Pfizer’s needs, as it did with the other developers of Pfizer. vaccines under federal contract.
Biden’s aides began talking to Pfizer executives about what the company needed to make more shots before the day of the inauguration. When Biden traveled to Michigan on February 19 to visit the Pfizer factory, Dr. Albert Bourla, the company’s chief executive, warmly praised the new management as “a great ally”, saying employees helped the company ensure essential materials and equipment.
The biggest piece of blockage in doses sufficient to cover adults in the country before June was Johnson & Johnson. Just two weeks ago, Dr. Richard Nettles, Johnson & Johnson’s vice president for medical affairs in the United States, said only that the company would supply 20 million doses by the end of March and 100 million doses by the end of June. . This fell short of the 37 million dose contract at the end of March and 87 million at the end of May.
Reuters reported on Tuesday that Johnson & Johnson informed European Union officials that production problems could delay shipments, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he had heard similar warnings from the company.
In the United States, the company’s biggest concern was to have the vaccine packaged by two third-party companies. This “filling and finishing” job is divided between a plant in Michigan managed by Grand River Aseptic Manufacturing, or GRAM, and a plant managed by Catalent in Bloomington, Indiana. Biden’s team pressured Johnson & Johnson to order GRAM to move from normal business hours to 24/7 operations, a senior management official said. Another federal official said Johnson & Johnson was largely on the way, but “climbed a little faster” under pressure.
The authorities also brokered an unusual partnership between Johnson & Johnson and a longtime competitor, Merck & Co. The Trump administration has repeatedly explored the use of Merck plants to boost vaccine production, but has never reached an agreement.
Zients, the pandemic advisor, said on Sunday that the new alliance helped the Biden government set its new target for May. In fact, however, Merck is likely to bottle only a few million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by then, according to people familiar with its operation. The main benefit of the partnership will come at the end of the year, when Merck will have refurbished a huge factory with the capacity to produce up to 100 million doses of vaccine per month, they said.
In addition to the basic details of the production, the Biden White House has been pursuing a messaging campaign totally different from that of Trump: promise less and then try to over-deliver. Trump routinely boasted of imminent achievements, including launching a vaccine before election day, just to fall short. In contrast, health experts complained, at least initially, that Biden was overly cautious.
When the vaccine launch began in December, Biden promised that his administration would average 1 million vaccines a day during his first 100 days in office – enough to vaccinate 50 million people by the end of March.
After less than a week in office, he increased the goal by 50%, to 1.5 million kicks a day. The nation surpassed Biden’s initial goal about a month ahead of schedule and is now averaging 2.17 million doses a day.
Carefully calibrated goals “prevent losses,” said David Axelrod, senior strategist for President Barack Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012. “Certainly they must have learned this lesson from watching Trump.”
“Internally, you drive towards the highest possible goal that you can do. Externally, you define a floor that you are reasonably confident you can reach, ”he said.
This article was originally published in The New York Times.
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