(Adds comments from Psaki, company, Canadian source)
By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON, March 18 (Reuters) - The United States plans to
send roughly 4 million doses of AstraZeneca's COVID-19
vaccine that it is not using to Mexico and Canada in loan deals
with the two countries, bowing to pressure to share vaccine with
its allies.
Mexico will receive 2.5 million doses of the vaccine and
Canada is to receive 1.5 million doses, White House spokeswoman
Jen Psaki said.
"It is not fully finalized yet but it is our aim," she told
a daily briefing.
The Biden administration has come under pressure from
countries around the world to share vaccines, particularly its
stock of AstraZeneca, which is authorized for use elsewhere but
not yet in the United States.
AstraZeneca has millions of doses made in a U.S. facility,
and has said that it would have 30 million shots ready at the
beginning of April. The company's shares rose slightly after
Reuters first reported the news.
The deal to share the vaccine does not affect President Joe
Biden's plans to have vaccine available for all adults in the
United States by the end of May, a senior administration
official said, and it does not reduce the supply of available
vaccine in the United States.
Two officials said the vaccine would be delivered in "short
order" once the deal was completed, but they declined to give a
more specific timetable.
The so-called "releasable" vaccines should be ready for use
once they arrive in Mexico and Canada. Under the deal, the
United States will share doses with the two countries now with
the understanding that they will pay the United States back with
doses in return. The official said that would take place later
this year.
Psaki said the United States had access to 7 million
releasable doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine but had no plans to
share the vaccine with other countries at this time.
"We ... have a number of requests from a range of countries
around the world and certainly we'll continue those
conversations," she said.
Asked why Mexico and Canada were chosen, the administration
official said: "They are our neighbors, they are our partners."
'MORE WORK TO DO'
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had requested
the vaccine previously. The official said the countries were in
touch about the vaccine loan. "We've been working through the
diplomatic channels," he said.
"We’re having positive conversations with the U.S. Those
conversations are fairly advanced but there's more work to do,"
a senior Canadian government source said.
Reports of blood disorders have prompted more than a dozen
nations to suspend use of AstraZeneca's vaccine but on Thursday
the European Union's drug watchdog said that after an
investigation it is still convinced the benefits of that vaccine
outweigh the risks.
A spokeswoman for AstraZeneca declined to comment on the
deal but noted that its doses in the United States were owned by
the U.S. government.
Biden has said if the United States has a surplus of
vaccine, it will share it with the rest of the world. The White
House has focused on vaccinating people in the United States,
which has seen more than 530,000 people die from virus.
The country is getting prepared to roll out the AstraZeneca
vaccine domestically if it gets authorization from the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration, the White House said.
The United States has pledged $4 billion to the global COVAX
vaccine program that aims to deliver coronavirus vaccines to
poor countries.
The United States does not need the AstraZeneca shots to
meet its target of having enough doses for all U.S. adults by
the end of May.
The three authorized vaccine makers – Pfizer Inc/BioNTech
SE, Moderna Inc, and Johnson & Johnson – have promised to
deliver nearly 500 million doses to the United States by then.
The U.S. decision to loan the AstraZeneca doses comes as
Mexico has in recent weeks leaned increasingly on China and
Russia to secure vaccines to carry out its inoculation plans.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; additional reporting by Trevor
Hunnicutt, Caroline Humer, Julie Steenhuysen, Steve Holland,
Steve Scherer and Dave Graham; Editing by Heather Timmons,
Aurora Ellis and Alistair Bell)
Astrazeneca (AZN)
