President biden
Joe BidenLawmakers, activists remember civil rights icons to mark ‘Bloody Sunday’. Fauci predicts that high school students will receive coronavirus vaccines this fall. Biden appoints female generals whose promotions were supposedly postponed by Trump MORE will meet with executives from Johnson & Johnson and Merck at the White House on Wednesday, canceling a planned trip to Baltimore to highlight a new partnership between the two rivals in vaccine production.
Press Secretary of the White House Jen Psaki
Jen PsakiMississippi governor defends end of term of the mask Crisis at the border creates new risks for Biden Cruz puts control of Biden’s nominee for the CIA MORE initially told reporters last week that Biden would travel to Baltimore for an event to denote the partnership after the two pharmaceutical giants reached an agreement on vaccine production. Psaki confirmed on Monday that the meeting will take place at the White House, although she declined to elaborate on the reason for the move.
“We felt it was a more appropriate place to hold the meeting,” she said. “But he hopes to discuss ways of working with them to streamline the supply and distribution of vaccines to the American people.”
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The Baltimore event was scheduled to take place at Emergent BioSolutions Inc. But the company was investigated after The New York Times reported on Saturday that the federal government had spent nearly half of its budget for National Strategic Stock in the past decade on contracts with the Emergent for its anthrax vaccines.
The state of the national stock came into focus last year, when the Trump administration struggled to acquire protective equipment in the early stages of the pandemic.
Emergent is working with Johnson & Johnson to produce the coronavirus vaccine.
Psaki said on Monday that the Biden government is conducting an audit of the national stockpile, but that she is unaware of any concerns that Emergent scrutiny will affect the schedule or pace of vaccine production.