A member of President-elect Joe Biden’s COVID-19 advisory team told CNBC on Monday that Biden plans to invoke the Defense Production Act to increase production of coronavirus vaccines.
Why it matters: The law allows the president to direct the private sector to prioritize manufacturing in the interest of national defense.
The big picture: Biden will invoke the wartime law to ensure that “personal protective equipment, testing capacity and raw materials for vaccines are produced in adequate supply,” Biden’s consultant, Dr. Celine Gounder, told ” Squawk Box “from CNBC.
- Gounder added that under the Biden administration, the United States will see “a huge increase” in tests to screen for mild and asymptomatic cases of the virus, as well as in genomic surveillance, which tracks mutations in the virus to detect new variants.
- “We didn’t do that routinely,” said Gounder, referring to genomic surveillance under the Trump administration. “We have the technology. We simply choose not to spend money on this type of public health surveillance.”
The current situation: The US government purchased 400 million doses of coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna through Operation Warp Speed, including a 100 million dose agreement reached with Pfizer last week amid revelations that some states would receive between 25 % -40% fewer doses of vaccine than originally designed.
- The United States has also secured 400 million doses of vaccines from Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, Novavax, Sanofi / GlaxoSmithKline that have not yet been authorized by the FDA.
- Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said that every American who wants a vaccine should receive it by June 2021.
Go deeper: Why Americans will demand to be able to prove they are vaccinated