![]() "There was not only full transparency, there was show and tell," Pfizer spokesperson Sharon Castillo told NPR. ![]() "It's just that the truth was being concealed from us." "I can assure you that Alex Azar always conveyed the truth as he knew it," said Mango, who stepped down in January, of Azar's Today comments. ![]() Still, Azar had no idea what he was saying was wrong, Paul Mango, Azar's deputy chief of staff, told NPR. Instead of saying it would make 100 million doses for the world by the end of the year, the company disclosed that it would make 50 million. 27 until mid-January, according to an NPR analysis of allocation data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and interviews with several people familiar with the matter.Ī day earlier, Pfizer changed a line that had been appearing at the bottom of many of its news releases since the summer. It wouldn't finish delivering the doses projected to be due in its contract on Nov. "Pfizer will be producing and delivering to us approximately 20 million doses of vaccine each month starting at the end of this month, in November," Azar told Guthrie.īut Pfizer was more than a month behind that schedule. 10, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was on the Today show talking to Savannah Guthrie about the "fruits of Operation Warp Speed and America's biopharmaceutical industry." Officials with Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration's multibillion-dollar push to make a COVID-19 vaccine available in record time, didn't know there was a problem.Įarly on the morning of Nov. It was 17 days before Pfizer's first delivery deadline under its federal COVID-19 vaccine contract, and the company wasn't going to meet it, according to federal records and several people familiar with the matter. To learn more, please join the Wilson Center on Thursday, September 29, 2022, 10:00 am to 11:00 am ET for a dialogue on Phase Two of “vaccine diplomacy.Then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar (left) and President Donald Trump listen as Moncef Slaoui of Operation Warp Speed speaks about the crash program to develop a COVID-19 vaccine in the White House Rose Garden in May 2020. and European producers of highly effective mRNA vaccines invest more in overseas production? What are the public health and geopolitical implications of Chinese and Russian vaccine production in the developing world? What is the status of European Union and World Health Organization efforts to build vaccine development and production capabilities in Latin America and other developing regions? What are the strengths and barriers in countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico? In Latin America, for example, Argentina is already producing Russia’s Sputnik vaccine and Chile plans to manufacture China’s Sinovac jabs. That transition would reduce the likelihood of shortages in the near future and in any future pandemic, and provide economic benefits to developing economies. Later, it opened opportunities for countries such as China and Russia, and later the United States, to improve diplomatic relationships through the sale and donation of shots, a strategy sometimes referred to as “vaccine diplomacy.”Īs the pandemic persists, and waning immunity and new viral variants increase the importance of booster shots, many governments are emphasizing the importance of transitioning to a new phase of “vaccine diplomacy”: a global expansion of vaccine development and production capabilities. Initially, that dependency delayed vaccine campaigns, with significant public health consequences. Throughout the pandemic, regions such as Latin America have been almost entirely dependent on imported COVID-19 vaccines.
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