Biden Announces New Vaccine Deals That Ensure Enough Doses for Every American Adult by July

President Joe Biden announced Thursday that the government has signed procurement deals to ensure that the U.S. will have enough Covid-19 vaccine to cover every American adult by the end of July. The purchase agreements activated options built in to the existing contracts with the drugmakers negotiated by the Trump administration and means Americans will have access to an additional 200 million doses of the vaccines currently authorized for use—100 million from Pfizer and German company BioNTech, as well as another 100 million from Moderna. The deals will double the current vaccine supply and means the country should reach 600 million doses, capable of vaccinating 300 million adults, by the summer.

“We’ve now purchased enough vaccine supplies to vaccinate all Americans,” Biden said Thursday. “Now we’re working to get those vaccines into the arms of millions of people.” The current pool of people in the U.S. eligible for the vaccine stands at roughly 260 million, though that could expand if trials show vaccines to be safe and effective in younger children. The deal comes as part of a larger commitment by the Biden administration to speed up production and dissemination of the vaccines after some early bumps in push for national vaccination.

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Both Pfizer and Moderna have said they can accelerate the delivery to supply the U.S. with enough doses of their two-dose regimen to vaccinate 200 million people by the end of May. Possessing the necessary doses, everyone is now well aware, is not the same as vaccinating people, and Biden, in his remarks Thursday from the National Institutes of Health, said obstacles remain in getting the vaccines into the arms of hundreds of millions of Americans. But having enough supply is crucial to bringing down the infection rate, and there could be even more help on the way with vaccines from Novavax, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson currently being evaluating by the Food and Drug Administration. Upon approval, Johnson & Johnson said it could deliver an additional 100 million of its single-dose vaccine. With sufficient supply now appearing increasingly likely, Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested earlier this week that the U.S. could be in a position to open vaccination to anyone, not just prioritized groups, by as early as April.

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