The U.S.’s Massive Vaccine Supply Could Become a Diplomatic Headache for Biden

Published April 7, 2021

The U.S. effort to vaccinate Americans for covid-19 is one of the most successful in the world. About 33 percent of Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and the country is on track to fully vaccinate the population sometime this summer. That will be great news for the United States — and will force President Biden to make some very difficult diplomatic decisions.

The problem for Biden will stem from the massive U.S. vaccine production capacity. By late March, Moderna and Pfizer were already shipping 23 million doses a week of their vaccines across the country, a number that has surely risen since. Johnson & Johnson has since added millions more doses per week to the total. It wouldn’t be shocking to learn that the combined weekly production from these three sources will hit 40 million doses per week by the end of April.

Right now that supply is fueling the U.S. vaccination program, which is still increasing the number of shots delivered each day. The United States vaccinated more than 4 million people on Saturday and has averaged about 3 million per day for the past week. But what happens to the vaccine supply once Americans no longer need it?

Click here to read the rest of this piece at the Washington Post’s website.

Henry Olsen is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.