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President Joe Biden on Wednesday afternoon said his administration will purchase an additional 100 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine by year’s end.
The announcement came at an event in Washington, D.C., that Biden held with the CEOs of J&J JNJ, +0.92% and rival drug maker Merck MRK, +0.84%, which is helping to produce J&J’s single-shot vaccine.
“I’m doing this because in this wartime effort we need maximum flexibility,” Biden said of buying the additional doses. “There’s always a chance that we’ll encounter unexpected challenges or there will be a new need for a vaccination effort. A lot can happen, a lot can change, and we need to be prepared.”
The goal of Biden’s move is to have enough shots on hand to vaccinate children and, if necessary, administer booster doses or reformulate the vaccine to combat emerging variants, according to a New York Times report citing unnamed administration officials.
“We want to be oversupplied and over-prepared,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said ahead of Biden’s announcement.
Besides J&J’s single-shot vaccine, the U.S. government also is buying two different vaccines that require two shots — one from Pfizer PFE, +1.39% and another from Moderna MRNA, -0.86%.
Related: Americans debate what COVID-19 vaccine they want, but Fauci says to take what’s available to you
Also read: Alaska becomes first state to open eligibility to everyone aged 16 and over
Some analysts viewed Wednesday’s move as a step toward engaging in what has been called “vaccine diplomacy.“
“With this order, the U.S. will have enough doses to vaccinate 500 million people, and there are 330 million people in the country,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont, in a note.
“And by the way, there are at least two more vaccine candidates in the pipeline (Oxford/AstraZeneca AZN, +1.10% and Novavax NVAX, +1.53% ) that could gain approval in the spring, and we would be committed to buy at least 100 million doses each from them upon approval,” Stanley added. “I have to assume that President Biden is positioning to donate the surplus doses overseas in an effort to gain friends and influence people globally.”
Biden also addressed what could be a surplus of doses in the U.S.
“If we have a surplus, we’re going to share it with the rest of the world,” the president said at Wednesday’s event, noting that his administration is giving $4 billion to the World Health Organization’s Covax program, which aims to ensure vaccine equity for lower-income countries.
“We’re not going to be ultimately safe until the world is safe, and so we’re going to start off making sure Americans are taken care of first, but we’re then going to try to help the rest of the world.”
More than 62 million people, or 18.8% of the U.S. population, have received at least one dose of a COVID019 vaccine as of Wednesday, according to a tracker run by the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention.
The location for Wednesday’s event was switched to Washington from a Baltimore manufacturing facility for Emergent BioSolutions, another J&J partner, after the New York Times reported that Emergent EBS, +3.03% had used its D.C. connections to gain outsize influence over the country’s emergency stockpile of drugs and medical supplies and boost purchases of its anthrax vaccines.
On Saturday, Biden said he expects the federal government will take delivery of enough COVID-19 vaccines to provide shots for all adults in the U.S. by the middle of May.
“It’s going to take longer to get it in their arm, but that’s how much vaccine we’ll have,” the president said on Saturday.
U.S. stocks SPX, +0.60% DJIA, +1.46% closed with gains Wednesday as a report on inflation showed only a modest rise that matched expectations, nudging bond yields down.
