An analysis published Tuesday warns that the Biden administration is likely to miss its modest goal of donating more than 1 billion coronavirus vaccine doses to the world by the end of September, a concern the White House seemed to tacitly acknowledge last week by omitting the timeline from its new Covid-19 preparedness plan.
Authored by Zain Rizvi of Public Citizen and Jo Walker, a PhD student in Yale’s Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, the new report finds that the Biden administration is set to fall short of its vaccine donation commitment “absent a surge of funding and political support for global vaccinations.”
“By the end of February, the U.S. had shipped 474 million doses, donating doses at a rate of 60 million in recent months,” the report notes. “To meet the 1.1 billion dose target, the U.S. would have to donate 626 million doses in seven months, or about 90 million doses per month. That would require increasing the donation rate by 50%.”
NEW: The Biden administration is not on track to meet its commitment of donating 1.2 billion vaccine doses this year. The White House quietly dropped the timeline in its new pandemic plan.
We tracked donations w/ @VaccineJo. Here’s what else we found.https://t.co/9Q0qlkOKXw pic.twitter.com/o6eidkHD8n
— Zain Rizvi (@zainrizvi) March 8, 2022
The assessment comes as Covid-19 remains a serious threat worldwide, killing more than 7,000 people each day and wreaking havoc on health systems across the globe.
Experts have been warning since the start of the vaccine rollout that failure to achieve sufficient global inoculation against the coronavirus virtually guarantees that additional mutations will emerge and spread, prolonging the deadly pandemic and its far-reaching societal consequences.
According to the World Health Organization, nearly 90 countries are not on track to fully vaccinate 70% of their populations by the start of July 2022. The latest figures from Our World in Data indicate that just 13.6% of people in low-income countries have received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose as rich nations continue to hoard doses and key technology.
In an interview with the New York Times, Rizvi said it is “shocking” that the Biden administration is struggling to meet donation commitments that advocacy groups have criticized as inadequate. Public health campaigners have also criticized the Biden White House for focusing its attention largely on vaccine charity while neglecting technology transfer and global manufacturing.
In the new report, Rizvi and Walker note that “after a brief spike in December, donations in January and February lagged behind the required pace.”
“The reason for the delay is unclear,” the report states. “But it comes after a Politico story in June reported that the Biden administration had used more than a billion dollars intended to assist countries with vaccine distribution to pay for Pfizer vaccines.”
Last month, Politico reported that the Biden administration is “running out of money to support the global vaccination push, and negotiations with Congress on securing new funding have stalled.” Such cash shortages are an indication that “more delays may be coming,” Rizvi and Walker write.
“Biden promised a war time effort against the virus,” the report continues, alluding to president’s vow to make the U.S. the “vaccine arsenal” of the world. “But a narrow reliance on donations, without a larger strategy on delivery and manufacturing, has undermined the global vaccination effort. The Biden administration can move forward by rapidly requesting additional funding from Congress to make ambitious investments in delivery and manufacturing. One million lives may be at stake.”
Rizvi and Walker’s analysis was released days after the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) found that “while the U.S. has contributed far more [coronavirus vaccine doses] than any other donor, its rank falls considerably when standardized by GDP.”
“The U.S. falls to 6th when ranked by pledged doses per $1 million GDP and is more in line, but still lower than, other large economies such as Germany and France,” KFF notes. “By this measure, Bhutan ranks first, followed by the Maldives, Germany, France, New Zealand, and then the U.S.”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.