WASHINGTON – In the best of times, working at the United States Embassy in Pristina, Kosovo, has always been difficult: pollution, poor electricity, unreliable internet service and a substandard health care system made it a difficult job for American diplomats.
That was before the coronavirus pandemic.
In a warning telegram sent last week to State Department headquarters, the American ambassador to Pristina, Philip S. Kosnett, described increasingly dire conditions for his team, including depression and burnout, after nearly a year of trying to balance functions service to the diplomatic public during the pandemic.
He said many embassy officials feel insecure about going out, shopping or undergoing medical tests in a country that despises masks. Others reported to the office independently, unable to gain access to government systems at home, to keep up with the demands of working with a staff reduced by virus-related matches.
Kosnett said he has not yet received vaccines for his diplomats, although the doses were given to some Washington State-based officials two months ago.
“It is more difficult to accept the department’s logic of prioritizing vaccination for back-up personnel in Washington,” wrote Kosnett, a career diplomat, in the cable, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “Until the department is able to supply vaccines to posts like Pristina, the impact of the pandemic on health, well-being and productivity will remain profound.”
His concerns, previously reported by NBC News, were echoed by American diplomats working in Europe, the Middle East and South America, who complain that the State Department’s distribution of the vaccine was, at best, disjointed.
At worst, some diplomats said, it left the distinct impression that the needs of senior leaders and US-based officials were more pressing than those of people who lived in countries with growing cases of viruses or modern health systems. – or, in some cases, both.
The outcry represents a silent but widespread mutiny among the American diplomatic corps, the first so far during the term of Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.
Some State Department career officials also complained about political nominations being chosen for excellent positions, despite Blinken’s promise to promote internally.
But the department’s internal schism over vaccine delivery resonated particularly in light of President Biden’s promise to speed up doses for Americans and after Blinken noted last month that the pandemic had killed five American citizens and 42 local officials employed at embassies and consulates around the world.
In at least two telegrams to the department’s workforce this month, Blinken and other senior officials seemed concerned about trying to assure frontline diplomats that they too would be vaccinated, if they wished, as soon as doses were available.
“The sad and difficult reality is that there are more places that need doses immediately than we have the supply to accommodate,” said Carol Z. Perez, undersecretary of interim administration, in the last telegram, dated Monday, to update all diplomatic and consular posts on the department’s response to the virus. “I understand the frustration and we are doing everything we can to fill those gaps.”
She said the next batch of doses for employees, expected next month, will be sent “almost exclusively abroad,” as people in “critical infrastructure” jobs in Washington have been vaccinated.
Still, the telegram, which was signed by Blinken, said it was unclear how many doses the State Department would receive from the government’s vaccine campaign in March – nor exactly where they would be sent.
The department has so far received about 73,400 doses of vaccine, or about 23 percent of the 315,000 required for its officials, families and other family members of American diplomats who are posted abroad, foreign-born employees who work in embassies and consulates. abroad and contracted.
Eighty percent of these vaccines were shipped abroad – the same as the number of full-time State Department employees working abroad, if not their family members or contractors. But diplomats noted greater risks of infection and lower quality of health care in many countries that were not comparable to conditions in the United States.
A Middle East-based official said that medical staff at some American embassies were sent back to Washington to administer vaccines to local officials, leaving the impression that foreign personnel were not a priority.
As in the United States, officials at the department’s headquarters have struggled to deliver a vaccine that requires sub-zero temperature controls to more than 270 diplomatic posts around the world. In the past few weeks, the State Department has obtained more than 200 freezers for embassies and consulates to use to store vaccines, 80% of which have already been delivered, Perez said.
She also acknowledged “wrong steps,” as in December, when an unspecified number of doses stored at the wrong temperature in Washington needed to be used immediately or would go to waste. They were given to department officials who were placed on a priority list by their managers and who were able to attend the medical unit at the State Department headquarters on short notice during the holidays.
Much of the first portion of the doses went to the department’s frontline employees: medical, maintenance and diplomatic security personnel, and employees who work in 24-hour operations centers that monitor diplomatic and security developments across the country. world. Vaccines were also given to officials on State Department missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.
What was left, for the most part, was for Washington area employees who worked in government offices at least eight hours a week.
In January, diplomats in Mexico City, across West Africa and Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, received the vaccine – as well as employees at passport offices in Arkansas, New Hampshire and New Orleans. Additional Washington area officials also received doses.
This month, most of the doses were assigned to diplomatic posts in East Africa and South Africa, as well as to remaining Washington area officials who regularly work in the United States office and staff at the United Nations in New York. .
Separately, a senior department official said on Tuesday that about a dozen Trump administration appointees were also vaccinated before they left the government, although the official refused to identify who they were.
Some diplomats abroad said it might be quicker to get the coronavirus vaccine from the countries where they are sent, rather than waiting for the State Department. In the telegram on Monday, Perez said that this would be allowed by at least 17 foreign governments so far, as long as they meet American legal and security standards.
She also said the State Department was the only federal agency that used all the vaccines it received from the Department of Health and Human Services without wasting or spoiling any doses. “I wish we had more,” she said.
Despite widespread exasperation, at least some foreign diplomats said they also understood that global demand for the vaccine far exceeded supply – even though, they said, the State Department could have planned better months ago to guarantee more doses.
In Pristina, where about 20% of embassy workers were infected with the virus, Kosnett said the team’s morale had plummeted since the vaccine was announced. He said that many diplomats doubt that the embassy will ever receive doses, and some believe that the State Department cares little about the situation.
He and other senior embassy officials “can and should do more locally to resolve moral issues,” wrote Kosnett in the cable.
“But we would ask Washington to do more too,” he said. “Raising expectations repeatedly and then dashing hopes for vaccine distribution has strongly affected our community’s outlook for the future.”