The Biden government, under intense pressure to donate excess coronavirus vaccines to needy countries, is addressing the global shortage in a different way: by partnering with Japan, India and Australia to fund a dramatic to expand the vaccine production capacity.
The agreement was announced Friday at the Quad Summit, a virtual meeting between the heads of state of the four countries, which was attended by President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday morning. According to senior officials, the aim is to address an acute shortage of vaccines in Southeast Asia, which in turn will increase global supply.
The United States fell far behind China, Russia and India in the race to promote coronavirus vaccines as a tool of diplomacy. At the same time, Mr. Biden faced accusations of “vaccination of vaccines” from global health advocates who want his government to channel supplies to needy countries desperate for access.
The president has so far refused to make concrete commitments to give away American vaccines.
“If we have a surplus, we’re going to share it with the rest of the world,” he said earlier this week, adding: world trying to help. ”
The One Campaign, a non-profit organization founded by U2 singer Bono, says the US has bought 453 million surplus vaccine doses that can be shipped abroad. It called on the Biden government to divide 5 percent of the doses abroad once 20 percent of Americans have been vaccinated, and to gradually increase the percentage of shared doses as more Americans are vaccinated.
“It is time for American leaders to ask themselves: When this pandemic is over, do we want the world to remember America’s leadership to distribute life – saving vaccines, or will we leave it to others?” Tom Hart, executive director of The One Campaign in North America, said in a statement.
China and India are already giving away vaccine shots to benefit neighbors, and more than 50 countries from Latin America to Asia have ordered 1.2 billion doses of Russian Sputnik V vaccine. But Mr. Biden will experience a political uproar if he sends doses abroad while it is still scarce in the United States.
Mr. Biden is taking steps to increase vaccine production so that by the end of this year, as many as a billion doses will be available – far more than is needed to vaccinate the approximately 260 million American adults.
An agreement negotiated by the administration to have pharmaceutical giant Merck manufacture the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which Mr. Biden celebrated in the White House on Wednesday will help advance the cause. Mr. Biden also ordered federal health officials Wednesday to get an additional dose of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.
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The administration said these efforts are aimed at having enough vaccine for children, increased doses and unforeseen events, such as infectious new variants. But Jeffrey D. Zients, the 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 coronavirus vaccine manufactured by the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca are sitting in US manufacturing facilities, awaiting the results of the US clinical trial, while countries approving its use request access.
The fate of the doses is the subject of intense debate among White House and federal health officials, and some believe the government should let them go abroad where they are urgently needed, while others are unwilling to give it up. , according to officials of the senior administration. .
Officials said the funding agreement that the government will unveil at Friday’s square summit is aimed at creating capacity to make and deliver doses by 2022 to support global demand.
The administration has recently been in talks with international partners, including those who support a vaccination program of the World Health Organization, known as Covax, on various ways to boost the global vaccine supply, including by paying companies to produce more doses which then can be released overseas according to one participant in the discussions, who insisted on anonymity to describe private conversations.