The Trump administration and Pfizer are close to a deal under which the pharmaceutical company would bolster supply of its coronavirus vaccine for the United States by at least tens of millions of doses next year in exchange for a government directive giving it better access to manufacturing supplies.
NYTimes: An agreement, which could be announced as early as Wednesday, would help the United States at least partly offset a looming vaccine shortage that could leave as many as 110 million adult Americans uncovered in the first half of 2021.
Trump has been criticized for failing to lock in a chance to buy millions of additional doses of Pfizer’s vaccine, which has been shown to be highly effective against COVID-19.
That decision has delaid the delivery of a second batch of doses until Pfizer fulfills other international contracts.
So far, only two pharmaceutical companies — Pfizer and Moderna — have won federal authorization for emergency distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, and most of what they are capable of producing for the next six months has already been allocated through contracts with the United States and other governments.
In the negotiations, the government is asking for 100 million additional doses from Pfizer from April through June.
The company has signaled that it should be able to produce at least 70 million, and perhaps more, if it can get more access to supplies and raw materials.
To help Pfizer, the deal calls for the government to invoke the Defense Production Act to give the company better access to roughly nine specialized products it needs to make the vaccine.
One person familiar with the list said it included lipids, the oily molecules in which the genetic material that is used in both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines is encased.
Pfizer first started asking for the government’s help in obtaining supplies as early as September and has been unhappy about the lack of response, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.
Moderna and other companies that worked more closely than Pfizer with the administration through its Operation Warp Speed to develop their vaccines already receive favored treatment from suppliers, putting Pfizer at a disadvantage.
That includes two companies — Sanofi and Novavax — that have yet to begin large-scale clinical trials in the United States.
Pfizer and the administration have been negotiating for more doses from Pfizer for more than a month.
But a host of other issues have stood in the way of a deal, including Pfizer’s commitments to other nations that moved faster than the United States to lock in a big supply, according to people familiar with the situation.
Pfizer already has a federal contract, signed in July, to deliver 100 million doses of its vaccine by the end of March.
Moderna has the same agreement, and has also pledged to sell the government 100 million more doses in the second quarter of the year, from the start of April to the end of June.
Because the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccine both require two doses, that supply would cover only 150 million Americans out of the roughly 260 million who are eligible at the moment to be vaccinated. (Moderna’s vaccine is now restricted to those 18 and over, and Pfizer’s is limited to those 16 and over.)
If Pfizer provides another 100 million doses, that would leave about 60 million eligible Americans uncovered in the first half of the year.
Other producers could also cover the shortfall should their vaccines prove successful.
It is not clear how many more doses Pfizer can quickly produce even if the administration uses the Defense Production Act to clear away supply obstacles.
One person familiar with the situation said the firm may only be able to deliver 70 million by the end of June, even with better access to supplies.
Had the government agreed to prioritize its supply needs earlier, one person familiar with Pfizer’s situation said, the company might be better positioned now to fully meet the demands.
Documents reviewed by The Times showed that Pfizer officials began asking Gen. Gustave F. Perna, the chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, in September for help with supplies and brought up the issue repeatedly in weekly meetings.
President-elect Joe Biden has promised to distribute “100 million shots in the first 100 days” of his administration — roughly on pace with Trump’s projections for vaccination.
After introducing his pandemic response team earlier this month, Biden laid out his priorities for the start of his new government.
He repeated his previous calls for all Americans to wear masks for 100 days to prevent the spread of the virus and said he’d mandate doing so in federal buildings and on public transportation.
Biden also said he believed the virus could be brought under enough control to reopen “the majority of schools” within his first 100 days as president.
Those pledges came even as Biden struck a somber tone about the toll the coronavirus has already taken.
He said that, after about nine months of living with the pandemic, the U.S. is “at risk of becoming numb to its toll on all of us” and “resigned to feel that there’s nothing we can do.”