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White House Backs Pfizer’s Move to Begin U.S. Vaccine Exports

Published 03/05/2021, 18:57
Updated 03/05/2021, 19:18
© Bloomberg. Empty vials of sodium chloride and the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at a community vaccination clinic inside the Viejas Arena on the campus of San Diego State University in San Diego, California.

© Bloomberg. Empty vials of sodium chloride and the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at a community vaccination clinic inside the Viejas Arena on the campus of San Diego State University in San Diego, California.

(Bloomberg) -- The Biden administration will support Pfizer Inc (NYSE:PFE).’s move to begin exporting U.S.-made doses of its coronavirus vaccine, as the White House starts to unleash U.S. production for shot-starved nations abroad.

“We are glad to see that they are working with other countries to help them meet their supply needs,” Jeff Zients, President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 response coordinator, told Bloomberg News in a statement. He said the company is ahead of schedule in its commitments to supply the U.S.

The governments of Mexico and Canada said last week that they expected to begin receiving doses of Pfizer’s vaccine from the U.S., the first time the company’s U.S.-made shots are known to have been delivered to any buyer other than the American government itself.

Zients’s statement is the first indication that the Biden administration won’t stand in the way of the exports. Pfizer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Demand for shots in the U.S. has begun to wane, falling to 2.4 million injections a day for the last week, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. With about 40% of the adult population fully vaccinated already, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, supplies of shots are abundant enough that pharmacies have begun to advertise their availability.

That’s allowed Biden to begin turning some attention overseas, where the pandemic is raging in countries led by India, raising the risk that dangerous new variants of the virus may arise.

Biden has said he plans to send millions of doses of AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN) Plc’s vaccine abroad. The company has manufactured doses in the U.S. to fulfill a government contract, but the vaccine isn’t authorized for use in the U.S.

The White House has direct control over where its AstraZeneca shots go and has said it will make a decision on an initial tranche of 10 million doses in the coming weeks, pending a safety review.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

© Bloomberg. Empty vials of sodium chloride and the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at a community vaccination clinic inside the Viejas Arena on the campus of San Diego State University in San Diego, California.

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