The United States government is planning to give 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to countries around the world, The White House announced on Monday.
“The administration is looking at options to share American-made AstraZeneca vaccine doses during the next few months,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, noting that the U.S. was confident in its supply of other vaccine doses. “Given AstraZeneca is not authorized for use in the United States, we do not need to use AstraZeneca in our fight against Covid over the next few months.”
Psaki clarified that as of right now, the United States has “zero doses available of AstraZeneca,” adding that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) needs to conduct a review to ensure that the vaccine meets the United States’ guidelines. She also said that the FDA concurrence could arrive in the coming weeks and stressed that the results of the move are not immediate.
Psaki said that the administration expects 10 million doses to be available “if or when the FDA gives its concurrence.” There are also another 50 million doses in various stages of development that could be available in May or June.
AstraZeneca declined to comment to The Wall Street Journal on whether it was asked about the decision. “The doses are part of AstraZeneca’s supply commitments to the U.S. government,” a spokeswoman for AstraZeneca said in an email to the outlet. “Decisions to send U.S. supply to other countries are made by the U.S. government.”
Last month, the White House said it was looking into how it could “loan doses” to other countries amid reports that the U.S. was planning to send four million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines to Mexico and Canada.
The company has had a series of distribution problems in Europe. On Monday, the European Union announced that it was suing AstraZeneca for failing to uphold its contract to deliver a certain number of vaccines.
The Wall Street Journal reported, “Of 120 million doses agreed on for delivery in the first quarter, the EU received about 30 million. … For the current quarter, the two sides had contracted for 180 million doses. Almost a month in, deliveries are in the single-digit millions.”
The FDA has not made an authorization decision for the AstraZeneca vaccine. It has granted emergency use authorization to three vaccines including Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently called for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine’s administration to be paused as officials examined a potential link to a type of rare blood clot. Last week, however, the FDA and the CDC recommended that the pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine be lifted and distribution resume.
The Daily Wire reported that the AstraZeneca shots faced a similarly challenging start in Europe, as the administration of the vaccine was “halted in more than a dozen mostly European countries following scattered reports that a small number of people who had received it later experienced blood clots, according to The Associated Press.” In March, European Union regulators announced that the vaccine was safe and not connected to an overall increase in the risk of blood clots.