The Biden government, under intense pressure to donate excess coronavirus vaccines to underserved nations, is moving to address the global shortage in another way: partnering with Japan, India and Australia to finance a dramatic expansion of manufacturing capacity vaccines.
The deal was announced on Friday at the Quad Summit, a virtual meeting between heads of state from these four countries, which President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris attended on Friday morning. The goal, senior management officials said, is to address an acute shortage of vaccines in Southeast Asia, which in turn will increase global supplies
The United States lagged far behind China, Russia and India in the race to organize coronavirus vaccines as an instrument of diplomacy. At the same time, Biden is facing accusations of “vaccine accumulation” by global health advocates, who want their government to channel supplies to underserved nations that are desperate for access.
Insisting that Americans come first, the president has so far refused to make any concrete commitments to distribute American vaccines.
“If we have a surplus, we will share it with the rest of the world,” he said earlier this week, adding: “We will start by making sure that Americans are served first, but we’ll try to help the rest of the world then. “
The One Campaign, a non-profit organization founded by U2 singer Bono, says the United States has purchased 453 million excess doses of vaccine that could be sent to foreign countries. He asked the Biden government to share 5 percent of doses abroad, once 20 percent of Americans have been vaccinated, and to gradually increase the percentage of doses shared as more Americans are vaccinated.
“It’s time for US leaders to ask themselves: when this pandemic is over, do we want the world to remember America’s leadership in helping to distribute life-saving vaccines, or are we going to leave that to others?” Tom Hart, executive director of The One Campaign in North America, said in a statement.
China and India are already distributing vaccines to attract neighbors, and more than 50 countries, from Latin America to Asia, have ordered 1.2 billion doses of the Russian vaccine Sputnik V. But Biden would face political upheaval if he sent doses abroad while they are still scarce in the United States.
Biden is taking steps to increase vaccine production so that there are up to a billion doses available by the end of this year – far more than is needed to vaccinate the approximately 260 million American adults.
A deal the government brokered for pharmaceutical giant Merck to manufacture Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine, which Biden signed at the White House on Wednesday, will help achieve that goal. Also on Wednesday, Biden instructed federal health officials to guarantee 100 million additional doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
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The government said these efforts are aimed at having enough vaccine for children, booster doses and unforeseen events, such as new infectious variants. But Jeffrey D. Zients, Biden’s coronavirus response coordinator, told reporters on Friday that the agreement between Johnson & Johnson and Merck would also “help expand capacity and ultimately benefit the world.”
At the same time, tens of millions of doses of the coronavirus vaccine produced by the Swedish-British company AstraZeneca are stationed in American factories, awaiting the results of their clinical trial in the United States, while countries that have authorized its use beg for access.
The fate of these doses is the subject of intense debate between the White House and federal health officials, with some arguing that the government should let them go abroad, where they are sorely needed, while others are not ready to abandon them. according to senior government officials.
The financing deal that the government will unveil at the Quad Summit on Friday aims to build capacity to produce and deliver up to a billion additional doses in 2022 to support global demand, officials said.
The government has recently been in negotiations with international partners, including those who support a World Health Organization vaccine program, known as Covax, on several ways to increase the global supply of vaccines, including paying companies to manufacture more doses that can be released abroad, according to one participant in these discussions, who insisted on anonymity to describe private conversations.