Biden takes first interim steps to address global vaccine shortage

WASHINGTON – President Biden, under intense pressure to give excess coronavirus vaccines to countries in need, on Friday decided to address the global shortage in another way, in partnership with Japan, India and Australia to expand global vaccine manufacturing capacity.

In a deal announced at the so-called Quad Summit, a virtual meeting of leaders from the four countries, the Biden administration pledged to provide financial support to help Biological E, a leading vaccine maker in India, to produce in at least 1 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines by the end of 2022.

This would alleviate a serious vaccine shortage in Southeast Asia and beyond without risking an internal political backlash linked to the export of doses in the months to come, as Americans demand their vaccines.

The United States is far behind China, India and Russia in the race to mobilize coronavirus vaccines as an instrument of diplomacy. At the same time, Mr Biden faces accusations of stacking vaccines from global health advocates who want his administration to get the supplies to needy countries desperately in need of access.

Insisting that Americans come first, the president has so far refused to make concrete commitments to donate vaccines made in the United States, even as tens of millions of doses of the vaccine made by the Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca remain idle in American manufacturing plants.

“If we have a surplus, we’re going to share it with the rest of the world,” Biden said this week, adding, “We’re going to start by making sure Americans are taken care of first, but we’ll get you there then. trying to help the rest of the world. “

In fact, the president has a lot of work ahead of him at the national level to keep the promises he has made in recent days: that all states must make all adults eligible for vaccinations by May 1, that there will have enough vaccine doses by the end. May to vaccinate every American adult, and that by July 4, if Americans continue to follow public health guidelines, life should return to some semblance of normalcy.

The vaccine supply appears to be on track to meet these goals, but the president has yet to create the infrastructure to deliver the doses and overcome the reluctance of large sectors of the population to take them.

Yet Mr. Biden has also made restoring US leadership a centerpiece of his foreign policy agenda after his predecessor severed alliances and strained relations with allies and global partners. Its Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, said in a recent interview with the BBC that a global vaccination campaign would be part of that effort; Washington, he said, was “determined” to be an “international leader” in immunization.

Foreign policy experts and global health activists clearly see diplomatic, public health and humanitarian reasons for doing so.

“It’s time for America’s leaders to ask: when this pandemic is over, do we want the world to remember the American leadership that helped distribute life-saving vaccines, or are we going to leave that to others?” said Tom Hart, North American executive director of One Campaign, a nonprofit organization founded by U2 singer Bono and dedicated to eradicating global poverty.

The federal government has purchased 453 million excess doses of the vaccine, the group said. He called on the Biden administration to share 5% of its overseas doses when 20% of Americans have been vaccinated, and to gradually increase the percentage of shared doses as more Americans receive their vaccines.

As of Friday, 13.5% of people aged 18 or older in the United States had been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The authoritarian governments of China and Russia, which are less shaken by domestic public opinion, are already using vaccines to expand their spheres of influence. As the Biden administration plans its strategy to counter China’s growing global influence, Beijing is polishing its image by shipping vaccines to dozens of countries on multiple continents, including Africa, Latin America and especially its rear -course in Southeast Asia.

Russia has provided vaccines to Eastern European countries, including Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, at a time when Biden officials want to keep the European Union unified against Russian influence on the continent .

“We may be outclassed by others who are more willing to share, even if they do so for cynical reasons,” said Ivo H. Daalder, former NATO Ambassador and Chairman of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “I think countries will remember who was there for us when we needed them.”

With the emergence of disturbing and highly infectious new variants in the United States and around the world, public health experts believe that vaccinating people overseas is also necessary to protect Americans.

“It must be sold to Americans as a critical strategy to keep Americans safe in the long term, and it must be sold to a highly divided and toxic America,” said J. Stephen Morrison, global health expert at the Centers. strategic and international studies. “I don’t think it’s impossible. I think Americans are starting to understand that in a world of variations, everything that happens outside our borders increases the urgency to go very quickly.

Mr Blinken told the BBC: “Until everyone in the world is vaccinated, no one is really safe.”

The Quad Vaccine partnership announced at Friday’s summit meeting involves different commitments from each of the countries, according to the White House.

Beyond helping India’s vaccine maker, the United States has pledged at least $ 100 million to build vaccination capacity overseas and support public health efforts. Japan, he said, is “in discussions” to grant loans to the Indian government to expand the manufacture of vaccines for export and help immunization programs in developing countries. Australia will contribute $ 77 million to provide vaccines and delivery support, with a focus on South East Asia.

The four countries will also form a  Quadruple Vaccine Expert Group  senior scientists and government officials who will work to overcome manufacturing hurdles and financing plans.

Mr Morrison said the administration deserved “some credit” for the effort, adding, “It shows diplomatic ingenuity and speed.” But a spokesperson for Campaign One, which focuses on extreme poverty, said his group would still like to see a plan for the US vaccine stockpile and noted that Africa had administered far less doses per capita than Asia.

Mr Biden’s efforts to speed up vaccine production have helped put the United States on track to produce up to a billion doses by the end of the year – far more than needed to vaccinate people. some 260 million adults in the United States.

A deal the administration has negotiated for pharmaceutical giant Merck to manufacture Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine, which the president celebrated in the White House on Wednesday, will help advance that goal. Also on Wednesday, Mr Biden ordered federal health officials to obtain an additional 100 million doses of the vaccine from Johnson & Johnson.

The administration said these efforts are aimed at having enough vaccine for children, booster doses to deal with new variations and unforeseen events. But Jeffrey D. Zients, Mr Biden’s coronavirus response coordinator, told reporters on Friday that the agreement between Johnson & Johnson and Merck “would also help increase capacity and ultimately benefit the world.”

In addition to resisting pressure to overdose, Mr Biden drew criticism from Liberal Democrats by blocking a demand by India and South Africa for a temporary waiver of an international intellectual property deal that would give poorer countries easier access to generic versions. coronavirus vaccines and treatments.

“I understand why we should prioritize our sourcing with Americans – it was paid for by American taxpayers, President Biden is President of the United States,” said Representative Ro Khanna, a liberal Democrat from California. “But there is no reason why we should prioritize the profits of pharmaceutical companies over the dignity of people in other countries.”

Mr Biden recently announced a donation of $ 4 billion to Covax, the international immunization initiative supported by the World Health Organization. David Bryden, director of the Frontline Health Workers Coalition, a non-profit organization aimed at supporting health workers in low- and middle-income countries, said the money was also desperately needed to help train and pay these workers to administer vaccines abroad.

But that donation, and the Quad’s announcement on Friday of financial support for vaccine production, still fall short of urgent appeals from public health advocates for the United States to immediately provide ready-to-use doses that can be quickly injected.

The Quad’s focus on Southeast Asia, however, most likely reflects an awareness of gratitude to China in the region, which Beijing has placed at the center of its vaccine distribution efforts.

If Mr. Biden is widely seen as helping the world recover from the coronavirus pandemic, it could be part of his legacy, such as when President George W. Bush responded to the AIDS crisis in Africa in the 2000s with a huge investment in public health funding. . More than a decade later, Mr. Bush and the United States remain revered across much of the continent for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or Pepfar, which the government says has spent $ 85 billion and saved 20 million lives.

Michael Gerson, a former White House speechwriter under Mr. Bush and a political adviser who helped design the Pepfar program, said its effect was both moral and strategic, and the program won United States “a tremendous amount of goodwill” in Africa.

“I think the principle here should be that the people who need it most should get it, no matter where they live,” he said. “It doesn’t make a lot of moral sense to give the vaccine to a healthy 24-year-old American in front of a frontline worker in Liberia.”

But, he added, “it’s very difficult for an American politician to explain.”

Ana Swanson report creation