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President Biden canceled a trip to a vaccine manufacturer on Wednesday after a scathing report said company lobbying left the federal stockpile of medical supplies unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden was scheduled to visit a Baltimore facility operated by Emergent BioSolutions, but he canceled the trip following Sunday’s report.
“We just felt [the White House] was a more suitable place to hold the meeting, ”White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during her daily press briefing on Monday.
“The administration will undertake a full review and audit of the national stock,” she said.
The CEOs of Johnson & Johnson and Merck are expected to meet with Biden to discuss the deployment of the third COVID-19 vaccine approved in the United States. Emergent is working with these companies under a federal Operation Warp Speed contract. It is not known whether an Emerging Representative will attend the White House meeting after the venue change.
Emerging’s long-standing sales of an anthrax vaccine, supported by an annual lobbying budget of $ 3 million since 2010, have used up a large chunk of the Strategic National Stockpile’s pre-pandemic purchases, the National Stockpile reported. New York Times.
Last year, as nurses carried garbage bags due to a shortage of protective equipment, the company sold the government $ 626 million worth of anthrax vaccines, which are spoiling its shelves. ‘they are not used.
The anthrax vaccine only slightly improves patient outcomes when it supplements cheap antibiotics, according to the report. But the company’s anthrax vaccine absorbed 40% of funds from the national stockpile from 2010 to 2018, even though there has been no anthrax attack since a 2001 letter-writing campaign that caused it. killed five.
Emergent would earn 75 percent of the anthrax vaccine, a license it purchased in 1998 from the state of Michigan before raising the price. It would have undermined the efforts of a rival company to manufacture a second vaccine.
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