WASHINGTON – In the best of times, it has always been difficult to work at the US Embassy in Pristina, Kosovo: pollution, poor electricity, unreliable internet service and a poor health care system there have made it difficult for US diplomats.
This was before the coronavirus pandemic.
In a warning cable sent to State Department headquarters last week, U.S. Ambassador to Pristina Philip S. Kosnett described increasingly dire conditions for his staff, including depression and burnout, after a year of trying to public duties of diplomacy during the pandemic.
He said many of the embassy employees feel unsafe to go outside, buy groceries or do medical examinations in a country that despises face masks. Others reported to the office, despite not being able to access government systems from home, to keep up with job requirements with staff thinned out by virus-related rooms.
Mr. Kosnett said he had not yet received vaccinations for his diplomats, although two months ago doses had been given to some State Department employees in Washington.
“It’s harder to accept the department’s logic of prioritizing rear-end vaccination in Washington,” Kosnett, a career diplomat, wrote in the cable, the copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “Until the department is able to supply vaccines to posts such as Pristina, the impact of the pandemic on health, well – being and productivity will remain deep.”
His concern, previously reported by NBC News, is reiterated by U.S. diplomats working in Europe, the Middle East and South America, who complain that the State Department is at best connected to the vaccine.
At worst, some diplomats said, it left the clear impression that the needs of senior leaders and employees in the United States were more urgent than those of staff living in countries with increasing virus cases or no modern healthcare systems – or in some cases cases, both.
The outcry represents a muted but widespread mutiny among the U.S. diplomatic corps, the first so far in the tenure of Antony J. Blinken.
Some career employees at the State Department have also complained about political appointments being used for plum posts, despite the promise of Mr. Shine to promote from within.
But the department’s internal crisis over the distribution of vaccines has resounded especially in light of President Biden’s promise to speed up doses to Americans, and after Mr. Blinken noted last month that the pandemic had killed five U.S. citizens and 42 local staff members at embassies and consulates in the country. world.
In at least two cables to the department’s workforce this month, Mr. Blinken and other senior officials are hurting in the effort to assure the leading diplomats that they too will be vaccinated if they were elected once doses were available.
“The unfortunate and difficult reality is that there are more places that need immediate doses than we need to accommodate,” Carol Z. Perez, acting under secretary of management, said in the latest cable, dated Monday, to all diplomats on to date. and consular posts on the virus’ response to the department. “I understand the frustration, and we are doing everything in our power to fill these gaps.”
She said the next dose of doses for employees, expected next month, would be sent “almost exclusively overseas” as staff in “critical infrastructure” were vaccinated in Washington.
The cable, which was manufactured by Mr. Blinken, signed, said it was not clear how many doses the Department of Foreign Affairs would receive from the government’s vaccination campaign in March, nor where exactly it would be sent.
The department has so far received about 73,400 doses of vaccinations, or about 23 percent of the 315,000 requested for its employees, families and other domestic members of U.S. diplomats posted abroad, staff members working abroad at embassies and consulates abroad, and contractors. .
Eighty percent of the vaccines were shipped overseas – at the same level as the number of full-time State Department employees working abroad, if not their relatives or contractors. But diplomats in many countries have noticed higher risks of infection and lower quality of health care, which were not at all comparable to the conditions in the United States.
One Middle East official said medical personnel in some U.S. embassies had been sent back to Washington to administer vaccines to officials, giving the impression that foreign personnel are not a priority.
As in the United States, officials at the department’s headquarters have struggled to deliver a vaccine that requires temperature control below zero at more than 270 diplomatic posts worldwide. In the past few weeks, the Department of Foreign Affairs has obtained more than 200 freezers for embassies and consulates to store the vaccines, of which 80 percent have been delivered, Ms. Perez said.
She also admitted ‘mistakes’, such as in December, when an unspecified number of doses stored in the wrong temperature in Washington had to be used immediately or go away. It was given to employees of the department who were placed on a priority list by their managers and could come to the medical unit at the head office of the State Department at short notice during the holidays.
A large portion of the first dose went to the frontline workers of the department: medical, maintenance and diplomatic security personnel and officials working in 24-hour operations centers that monitor diplomatic and security developments around the world. Vaccines were also given to employees at the State Department’s mission in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.
What was left mostly went to employees in the Washington area who worked at least eight hours a week from government offices.
In January, diplomats in Mexico City, across West Africa, and in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, received the vaccine – as did employees at passport offices in Arkansas, New Hampshire and New Orleans. Additional employees in the Washington area were also given doses.
This month, most of the doses were designated for diplomatic posts in East Africa and southern Africa, as well as remaining employees in the Washington area who regularly work from the office and staff at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York.
Separately, a department official said Tuesday that about a dozen senior Trump administration nominees had also been vaccinated before leaving the government, though the official did not want to identify who they were.
Some diplomats abroad have said that it may be faster to get the coronavirus vaccine from the countries in which they are posted, rather than waiting for the State Department. In the cable Monday, Ms. Perez said that so far at least 17 foreign governments would be allowed in, as long as they meet U.S. legal and security standards.
She also said the state department was the only federal agency that used every vaccine he received from the Department of Health and Human Services without wasting or spoiling any doses. “I wish we had more,” she said.
Despite the outrage, at least some foreign diplomats said they also understood that the global demands for the vaccine far exceeded the supply – even if the Department of Foreign Affairs could have planned better months ago to to get more doses.
In Pristina, where about 20 percent of embassy employees were infected by the virus, Kosnett said staff morale had dropped since the vaccine was introduced. He said many diplomats there doubted that the embassy would ever receive doses, and some felt that the foreign ministry cared little for their fate.
He and other senior embassy officials “can and must do more locally to address moral issues,” Kosnett wrote in the cable.
“But we are asking Washington to do more,” he said. “The repeated raising of expectations, and then the hope regarding the distribution of vaccines, has taken a heavy toll on the future prospects of our community.”