Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Invoking Defense Production Act Is Helping Boost Vaccine Supplies: Biden
Bloomberg: Biden Says He Invoked Production Law For More Vaccine Doses
President Joe Biden said that Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc. agreed to sell more doses of their coronavirus vaccine to the U.S. faster than planned after he invoked federal law that could force their production. In a CNN town hall event in Milwaukee on Tuesday, Biden touted his administration’s ramp-up of vaccine shipments while also warning that the pandemic won’t soon end. “We got them to move up time because we used the National Defense Act to be able to help the manufacturing piece of it, to get more equipment,” he said. He appeared to be referring to the Defense Production Act, a law that allows the government to nationalize commercial production in emergencies. (Sink, Wingrove and Epstein, 2/17)
NPR: Biden Administration Says It Has Increased Vaccine Supply
President Biden's COVID-19 czar Jeff Zients told governors on Tuesday that the weekly vaccine supply going out to states is increasing by more than 20% to 13.5 million doses this week, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, announced. Psaki also said the supply going directly to pharmacies will double to 2 million this week. Before taking office, Biden promised to improve and streamline Trump's Operation Warp Speed and pledged to get 100 million vaccine doses into arms in the first 100 days of his administration. (Romo, 2/16)
The Hill: Biden To Increase Number Of Vaccine Doses To States
The Biden administration will increase the number of COVID-19 vaccine doses going to states this week. States will receive 13.6 million doses per week starting this week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Tuesday. The current shipment is about 11 million doses. (Hellmann, 2/16)
In related news about the Biden administration's pandemic efforts —
The Washington Post: Harris’s Claim That Biden Vaccine Plan Was ‘Starting From Scratch’
The vice president gets into trouble when she says “we’re starting from scratch.” The Biden administration appears to have had to fill in the blanks of the Trump plan and certainly did speed up the tempo of what the Trump administration envisioned. It has added a federal component and pushed for funding for states. [Dr. Anthony] Fauci said the Trump plan was “rather vague” and “not a well-coordinated plan.” Biden administration officials may be proud of what they have accomplished, but they shouldn’t suggest that nothing was in place when they walked in the door. They have built on an existing structure left behind by the Trump team. Harris modified her comment by saying “in many ways,” but that’s not quite enough to avoid Pinocchios. (Kessler, 2/17)
