WASHINGTON (AP) – With the United States approaching President Joe Biden’s goal of injecting 100 million coronavirus vaccines weeks ahead of schedule, the White House announced on Thursday that the country is now in a position to help provide millions of lifeguards to neighboring Canada and Mexico shots.
The Biden government has revealed the outline of a plan to “borrow” a limited number of vaccines for Canada and Mexico, as the president announced that the United States is about to meet its 100-day injection target “well ahead of schedule” .
“I am proud to announce that tomorrow, with 58 days of management, we will have met our goal”Said Biden. He promised to reveal a new vaccination target next week, as the United States is on track to have enough of the three vaccines currently authorized to cover the entire adult population in just 10 weeks from now.
Prior to Biden’s comments, the White House said it was finalizing plans to ship 4 million combined doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to Mexico and Canada on its first export of vaccines. Press secretary Jen Psaki said the details of the “loan” are still being worked out, but 2.5 million doses will go to Mexico and 1.5 million to Canada.
“Our first priority remains to vaccinate the population of the United States,” said Psaki. But she added that “ensuring that our neighbors can contain the virus is a critical step in the mission, it is a critical mission to end the pandemic.”
The AstraZeneca vaccine has not yet been authorized for use in the United States, but it was done by the World Health Organization. Tens of millions of doses were stored in the United States, pending emergency use authorization, and this generated an international outcry that the vaccine lifeguards are being suspended when they could be used elsewhere. The White House said only 7 million doses of AstraZeneca are ready for shipment.
The initial series of doses manufactured in the U.S. are owned by the federal government under the terms of the agreements signed with drug manufacturers, and the Biden government has faced calls from allies around the world to release AstraZeneca vaccines for immediate use. Biden also responded to direct requests from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to buy vaccines produced in the United States.
Proponents of global public health say that wealthy nations like the United States need to do much more to help stem the spread of the pandemic. The World Health Organization released on Thursday a report that less than 7 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in Africa so far. This is equivalent to what the US manages in a matter of days.
Biden acted for the US to contribute financially to the COVAX alliance, supported by the United Nations and the World Health Organization, which will share the vaccine with more than 90 middle and lower-income nations, but the US has not yet committed to sharing any doses. .
From his early days in office, Biden has established clear – and achievable – metrics for success in the United States, whether vaccinations or school reopenings, as part of an apparent strategy of promising little and then overdelivering. Aides believe that exceeding your goals builds confidence in the government after the Trump administration’s sometimes fanciful rhetoric about the virus.
The goal of 100 million doses was first announced on December 8, days before the United States even had an authorized vaccine for COVID-19, not to mention the three that have now received emergency clearance. Still, it was generally seen within reach, albeit an optimistic one.
When Biden opened on January 20, the United States had already administered 20 million shots at a rate of about 1 million a day, complaining at the time that Biden’s goal was not ambitious enough. He quickly revised to 150 million doses in the first 100 days.
The United States is now injecting an average of about 2.2 million doses a day – and the pace is expected to increase dramatically later this month, in conjunction with an expected increase in vaccine supplies.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, injections of 96 million doses have been reported to the agency since Biden’s inauguration, but these reports are delayed from the effective date of administration. Vaccination trend lines pointed to Biden breaking the 100 million mark on Thursday, with the numbers likely to be confirmed by the CDC as early as Friday.
The president started to streamline vaccine deliveries from Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, in addition to expanding the number of vaccination sites and people who can apply them, with a focus on increasing the country’s ability to inject doses as the doses increase. supply restrictions.
The risk of setting very optimistic expectations is that a government can be defined by failing to live up to them, as in May 2020, when President Donald Trump said the nation had “prevailed” over the virus.
At the time, the country had seen about 80,000 deaths from the virus. This week, the death toll in the U.S. reached 538,000. Trump’s lax approach and lack of credibility also contributed to the low adherence to public safety rules among the American public.