U.S. Vaccine Supply: What to Know

Some Democratic governors have asked to buy vaccines directly from Pfizer. Is that possible?

No, it’s not likely to happen.

Last week, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan asked the federal government for permission to buy 100,000 doses of vaccine directly from Pfizer. And on Monday, Gov. Cuomo wrote a letter to Pfizer asking for the state to buy vaccines directly.

Pfizer and Moderna’s supply has been fully claimed for at least the first quarter of this year, meaning it’s unlikely there will be any spare vaccine to sell to individual states.

In addition, the emergency use authorizations for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines stipulate that the federal government oversees distribution.

In a statement, a Pfizer spokeswoman said the company “is open to collaborating with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on a distribution model that gives as many Americans as possible access to our vaccine as quickly as possible.” But she noted that “before we can even consider direct sales to state governments, H.H.S. would need to approve that proposal.”

A state official said on Tuesday that the governor felt it was important to exhaust all his options, no matter how unlikely they would be to succeed, and pointed to his efforts in March to directly buy ventilators from manufacturers — setting up a bidding war among states that he later criticized the federal government for fueling.

But advisers to the Biden administration have indicated that they are not in favor of such a move. On Monday, Dr. Celine Gounder, a pandemic adviser to Mr. Biden during his presidential transition, said allowing states to reach separate deals would cause more problems than it would solve.

In an interview on CNBC, Dr. Gounder noted Mr. Cuomo’s previous criticism of bidding over ventilators. “I think this kind of an approach to vaccine allocation is going to result, frankly, in the same kind of situation that he, himself, was criticizing last spring,” she said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/health/covid-vaccine-supply-biden.html