From scarcity to a glut of vaccines
Biden team soon will have to decide what to do with its extra doses.
WASHINGTON — Biden administration officials are anticipating the supply of coronavirus vaccine to outstrip U.S. demand by mid-May if not sooner, and are grappling with what to do with looming surpluses when vaccine scarcity turns to glut.
President Joe Biden has promised enough doses by the end of May to immunize all of the nation’s roughly 260 million adults. But between then and the end of July, the government has locked in commitments from manufacturers for enough vaccine to cover 400 million people — about 70 million more than the nation’s entire population.
Whether to keep, modify or redirect those orders is a question with significant implications, not just for the nation’s efforts to contain the virus but also for how soon the pandemic can be brought to an end. Of the vaccine doses given globally, about three-quarters have gone to only 10 countries. At least 30 countries have not yet injected a single person.
And global scarcity threatens to
grow more acute as nations and regions clamp down on vaccine exports. With infections soaring, India, which had been a major vaccine distributor, is now holding back nearly all of the 2.4 million doses manufactured daily by a private company there. That action follows the European Union’s decision this week to move emergency legislation that would curb vaccine exports for the next six weeks.
Biden administration officials who are inclined to hold on to the coming U.S. surplus point to unmet need and rising uncertainty: Children and adolescents are still unvaccinated, and no one is certain if or when immunity could wear off, which could require scores of millions of booster shots.
“We want to, largely, be a part of the global solution here,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said this week. But she added, “There are still a number of factors that are unpredictable that we need to plan for to the best of our ability, including the variants and the impact and what will be most effec
, as well as what will work best with children.”
Vaccine manufacturers and some top federal officials say decisions about what to do with extra orders must be made within weeks, or the uncertainty could slow production lines. The manufacturing process can take up to 10 weeks, and changes for a foreign market need time. The regulatory rules that govern vaccine shipments present another hurdle, as does the limited storage life of the drug substances of the vaccine.
All these variables threaten to complicate what has been relatively smooth sailing for the Biden administration. Thanks in part to the federal government’s determined assistance over many months, vaccine manufacturers have been steadily increasing their output, and states have snapped up new doses as fast as the government could deliver them.
Where to go from here is a matter of intense debate.
Clinical trials to determine which vaccines work for the nation’s adolescents and children are continuing and most likely will not neatly wind up at the same time. By the end of spring, for example, Moderna and Pfizer are hoping for interim results on how their vaccines would work for the nation’s 30-some-million adolescents. But Moderna, at least, does not expect results for children under 12 until after the school year starts in the fall.
The administration could hang on to doses from those two manufacturers while it awaits findings, only to discover later that another vaccine whose trials began later is a better option.
If one or more of the three authorized vaccines turn out to provide only brief protection against COVID-19, scores of millions of more doses could be required for booster shots. But when that answer will come is also uncertain.
Federal health officials have also discussed canceling or reducing some orders from Moderna and Pfizer in return for the promise of a fresh supply this fall of either pediatric doses or shots of a new vaccine that has been reconfigured to work against the fast-spreading variants.