In July, the U.S. government announced a deal with Pfizer and BioNTech, creators of a Covid-19 mRNA vaccine, to purchase 100 million doses of the vaccine. But that’s only enough to vaccinate about 50 million people with two doses each, which amounts to only around 15% of America’s population. The deal also included an option for the government to purchase an additional 500 million doses, but sources close to Health and Human Services have told Forbes that the government hasn’t yet purchased them.
“We are confident that we will have 100 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine as agreed to in our contract,” a spokesperson for Health and Human Services told Forbes, “and beyond that, we have five other vaccine candidates, including 100 million doses on the way from Moderna.”
The original deal with Pfizer cost the U.S. government almost $2 billion. The government also has a $1.5 billion contract with Boston-based Moderna for 100 million doses of its vaccine. It also has contracts with Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, and AstraZeneca for more than 500 million vaccine doses, but apart from Moderna, none of those vaccines are likely to have emergency use authorizations from the FDA before the end of the year.
A spokesperson from Pfizer declined to comment, saying only that the company expects to globally produce up to 50 million vaccine doses by the end of this year. HHS Secretary Alex Azar told the audience of the Forbes Healthcare Summit last week that the government could have 6 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine, enough for about 3 million people, by the middle of this month.
The news that the U.S. has only acquired a small number of the Pfizer vaccine comes just days before the FDA plans to review the company’s bid for an emergency use authorization. That authorization for the vaccine could come as soon as Friday, with frontline healthcare workers potentially getting the vaccine later this month.
Fox News reported early Monday that President Trump plans to sign an executive order on Tuesday that prioritizes giving Covid-19 vaccines to American citizens before the government will help other nations, which may be an effort to quell worries about vaccine shortages. But because Pfizer privately funded the work on its Covid-19 vaccine without help from the U.S. government, there is no legal way that President Trump, or the incoming Administration could “force” Pfizer to give the U.S. additional doses before other countries.
edit: CDC planning doc from the end of August with estimates for vaccine doses available by the end of 2020. Range was from 32 million to 52 million doses. That was just for "Vaccine A", which has to be the Pfizer vaccine based on the Notes that say it requires ultra-cold storage.
We have friends whose last name is Malon. When they were expecting, we spent more than one dinner with them discussing possible names for their soon to be born son.
Walter came up as a possibility.
Steve....wait up!.......
-------------------------------- When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
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Trump signed an executive order and said he may invoke the Defense Production Act to ensure sufficient vaccine supplies for the USA, but his administration has been insisting that existing arrangements will provide sufficient supply, you got the Warp Speed guy reacting like this on national TV: — — — — “I’m staying out of this. I can’t comment,” Dr. Moncef Slaoui, a leader of Trump’s vaccine initiative Operation Warp Speed, told ABC when asked about the order. “We feel that we can deliver the vaccines as needed, so I don’t exactly [know] what ... this order is about.” — — — —