At the moment, the United States has more than enough COVID-19 vaccine already purchased to treat every woman, man, and child in the nation. In fact, with the purchases President Biden has made, there are almost enough doses to treat everyone a second time—and that’s before the 100 million doses of Novavax’s upcoming vaccine are added in.

What the U.S. has isn’t a shortage of vaccine; it’s a shortage of patients. With the number of Republicans saying “no” to the vaccine is actually increasing despite the fact that rural red counties are turning out the highest rates of COVID-19 infection in the nation, the last thing that the U.S. needs is still more vaccine. In fact, on Tuesday Kaiser Health News reported that over 10 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine have been sitting on state shelves so long that they’re investigating ways to prolong viability. Hundreds of thousands of doses could begin expiring, unused, within a month. So naturally the United States has announced that it will purchase 500 million more doses of the highly effective vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech—enough to vaccinate every American adult all over again. D.

Only these doses aren’t going to American adults. As he departed Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, President Joe Biden made it clear he is preparing to announce an international vaccination plan—and the first step is giving those 500 million doses to nations around the world.

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            Wednesday, Jun 9, 2021 ·  8:47:27 PM +00:00

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      Mark Sumner
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    A new article in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03681-2.epdf?sharing_token=QWhv3JNnBhtTkqJZQe3EftRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0OtEsbAjL5cT440YylVdgJ9e93JrbMWEuR6-6Jv38xnewwPx5xPtupXTbnA-njDXnPn6ChJRswSMJ4rewjhCW4zsLuWoex7YPt7NMgaiKiRdFakEc0SC6w6SDBSbWfZHHbiIgxRJDFnmn9p6KXuGJ0xCXHPK-IFTTXnwxE6RwpOkeS-cOQCQYElp8aJRiYVFJM%3D&amp;tracking_referrer=www.usatoday.com">Nature </a>indicates that the Johnson &amp; Johnson vaccine is effective against a number of tested variants. 

While the United States is blessed with a superabundance of vaccine, this is far from a universal condition. Many nations—particularly in Asia and Africa—have much less vaccine than they need. Globally, the vaccination rate remains less than 6%, and in Africa the rate is less than 2%. In some cases, the biggest issue is simply cost. Others are wrestling with the fact that the primary supply of effective vaccines had been snatched up by wealthy nations, which has been tagged as “vaccine apartheid.” And in still other cases, like Brazil, poor decisions by national leaders have left the nation with an inadequate supply even though manufacturers tried to offer them help. 

In many countries, the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine is the only available option. But there have been concerns about the efficacy of Sinopharm. For example, even though more than 70% of those in the Seychelles have been received at least one dose of vaccine, the country is still seeing a surge of new cases, with many of those cases appearing among people who have reportedly been vaccinated with Sinopharm. That likely signals that this vaccine is not highly effective against the “delta” variant, which originally become dominant in India. 

Initial data also indicates that another Chinese-made vaccine, SinoVac, has been effective in the field, though not in areas where the delta variant is most dominant. And a number of questions remain about the widespread efficacy of either SinoPharm of SinoVac. Despite recent WHO approval for SinoPharm, that vaccine may be less than 50% effective in real-world situations.

Studies have also indicated that the Covaxin and Covishield vaccines, which were developed in India, are also not highly effective against the delta variant. And since Covishield duplicates the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine first developed in the U.K., these studies also raise fresh concerns about how that vaccine is holding up to the later variants.

However, the two mRNA-based vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are proving to be highly effective in real world use, with a 91% drop in infections that closely mirrors the results predicted by phase 2/3 testing. The Lancet reports that the Russian-made Sputnik V has also proven to be highly effective. (That vaccine employs a unique arrangement in which each of two doses use a different adenovirus as carriers for SARS-CoV-2 proteins. This could avoid problems in vaccines like Oxford-AstraZeneca, SinoPharm, or Covishield that use a single adenovirus.)

What all this means is that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is proving to be one of the most effective tools in fighting COVID-19 and one of the vaccines most in demand. Nations that are still trying to find doses for their populations are having to line up down the list, or settle for a vaccine with an efficacy that’s either unproven, or proven to be significantly lower. Even though President Biden earlier expressed support for removing patent protection from COVID-19 vaccines, it’s unclear how many locations can currently manufacture these mRNA vaccines.

So Biden is purchasing the best available vaccine. And giving it to the world. 

This may seem like a humanitarian gesture, or an effort to fend off earlier charges that the United States was hoarding vaccine to itself. Yes and yes. However, it’s also an important factor in protecting people in America, because it should cut down on future variants and limit the circulation of COVID-19 in the world population.

The Washington Post reports that in previous distributions the White House shipped most vaccines to Covax, a vaccine distribution organization founded by the World Health Organization. It’s unclear if that will also be the route of distribution for the new dozes of Pfizer/BioNTech, but that answer should come in the next two days.

Biden is expected to formally announce the vaccine distribution at a Group of Seven meeting to be held this week in the U.K. The announcement will come as part of a larger global vaccine strategy that is likely to include shipping additional doses of the vaccines that are going unused in the United States.

However, it is unclear if Biden will address this pressing issue brought to the Ohio legislature by a concerned anti-vaxxer.