Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Biden Aims To Boost Vaccine Supply With 200M More Doses
NPR: The Biden Administration Is Working To Buy 200 Million More COVID-19 Vaccine Doses
President Biden announced Tuesday that his administration is working to purchase an additional 200 million doses of the two COVID-19 vaccines that have been authorized for emergency use, with the goal, the White House says, of having enough vaccine supply for the entire adult U.S. population by the end of the summer. He also announced steps to increase vaccine doses going to state and local governments over the next three weeks, and to provide them more clarity going forward about how much supply they should expect. Longer term, Biden said his administration plans to buy an additional 100 million doses each from both Moderna and Pfizer, which has a vaccine with its German counterpart, BioNTech. (Swasey, 1/26)
ABC News: Biden Plans To Purchase 200M More Doses Of Pfizer, Moderna COVID-19 Vaccines
Biden also said the federal government will be increasing the number of doses shipped to states -- from 8.6 million doses a week to 10 million a week for the next three weeks, and will start notifying states how many doses they will receive three weeks in advance. ... The announcement does not resolve the major shortages that the nation is experiencing now and does not suggest the Biden administration has found a novel way to ramp up production quickly. (Flaherty, Ebbs and Gittleson, 1/26)
The Wall Street Journal: Administration To Buy Enough Doses To Vaccinate Most Americans By End Of Summer
“The brutal truth is, it’s going to take months before we get the majority of Americans vaccinated,” Mr. Biden said. Even with the increase in doses to states starting next week, supplies aren’t yet sufficient for what is needed now, a senior administration official said. (Armour, Siddiqui and Restuccia, 1/26)
NBC News: Biden Administration Orders 200 Million More Doses Of Covid-19 Vaccines
The agreement would lessen the country's reliance on getting additional doses on the market from other manufacturers. The Trump administration had passed on buying more doses from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna and was instead betting that additional vaccines from Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca would come to market. Johnson & Johnson said it will release data for its single-dose vaccine in the coming days. "We can't speak to the Trump administration, but what we can say is it is our philosophy, given the nature of this emergency and the speed with which the virus needs to be addressed, to procure enough supply as we need to vaccinate Americans and to give Americans the confidence we can do that," a senior administration official said. (Pettypiece, 1/26)
Politico: Biden Administration To Buy 200 Million More Doses Of Covid Vaccine
"This is an aggregate plan that doesn’t leave anything on the table or anything to chance," he said. "This is a wartime effort." Yet the companies will not deliver on those new shots until sometime this summer, raising the possibility of supply shortages that could stretch on for the next several months. The White House in the interim is boosting the amount of existing vaccine that it sends to states and other jurisdictions each week, as it tries to temper intensifying complaints about scarce supplies across the nation. (Cancryn and Roubein, 1/26)
In related news —
The Hill: White House Says Biden Didn't Set New Goal On Vaccines
The White House on Tuesday clarified that President Biden was being optimistic when he said a day earlier that he hoped the country could vaccinate 1.5 million people per day in the coming weeks, and that he was not setting a concrete goal. "The president didn't actually say 'the new goal is,' the president said I hope we can do even more than that. And that is certainly of course his hope," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a daily briefing. (Samuels, 1/26)
