With US Covid Vaccine Stockpiles Mounting, Pressure to Help the World Mounts

With the Covid vaccine numbers going up in the United States, and unused doses starting to become an issue, questions are being asked of the Biden Administration what is the plan for helping out the rest of the world?

The Washington Post:

But inside the Biden administration, there is confusion over which agency is leading the effort to craft the country’s global vaccination strategy, which has led to a fragmented rather than strategic approach. While Jeff Zients, the covid-19 coordinator at the White House, has been the person in charge of setting and executing the domestic fight against the virus, five administration officials say there are too many players addressing the worldwide challenge, with not enough direction.

The actors involved in the global response include officials from the White House’s coronavirus response team, the National Security Council, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and HHS.

Several of those officials conceded that the United States does not appear to have an overarching strategy but rather is taking a piecemeal approach. Speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, some framed the government’s recent actions, including sharing 4 million AstraZeneca doses with Canada and Mexico, pledging an additional 60 million doses later this year, and supporting the patent waiver, as incremental steps.

The White House defended its process and said that Zients and national security adviser Jake Sullivan were co-leading the global response, with support from NSC senior director Beth Cameron, who oversaw the Obama administration’s pandemic playbook, the State Department’s Gayle Smith, who is coordinating global diplomatic outreach, and USAID’s Jeremy Konyndyk, among others.

“Part of the strength of our response to date is our whole of government, interagency response,” said Natalie Quillian, deputy coordinator of the White House’s coronavirus response. “We’ve roped in almost every agency to help us respond. And we’ll have a similar interagency process, with some additional players and some players that domestically, play internationally in this response.”

Asked about the best tactic to vaccinate the world, Quillian pointed to the ongoing production push. “We’ve got to produce more vaccine,” Quillian said, touting the “power of American manufacturing” to help scale up the response.

And unlike other governments, the Biden White House is not making commitments it cannot fulfill, deputy national security adviser Jon Finer said.

“There are countries that are overpromising and underdelivering on their global covid-19 response for various reasons, including challenges with their vaccines or underestimating their own domestic needs,” he said. “And we really expect the opposite — to meet and exceed what we’ve pledged to do.”

But with about half of American adults having received at least one vaccine dose and domestic virus cases at their lowest levels in seven months, public health officials say the United States needs to increase its focus abroad.

“It’s time for a more systematic approach,” said Mark McClellan, who served as Food and Drug Administration commissioner during the George W. Bush administration and co-authored a recent report that concluded the United States could have 300 million or more excess vaccine doses by the end of July, if another vaccine made by Novavax receives emergency use authorization.

“We have to have a ‘both/and’ strategy at this point — especially since we’re doing so well in terms of vaccine availability in the U.S.,” McClellan said.