U.S Unveils Its Own Version Of 'Vaccine Maitri', To Donate 25 Million Stockpiled Doses Of Pfizer,Moderna,JJ But No Clarity Yet On 60 Million Unused AZ Vaccines

The United States today announced its framework for sharing at least 80 million unused vaccine doses globally by the end of June and the plan for the first 25 million doses.

75% of COVID-19 vaccines will be distributed through the U.N.-backed COVAX global vaccine sharing program.

Of the first tranche of 25 million doses, the White House announced about 19 million will go to COVAX, with approximately 6 million for South and Central America. 7 million doses have been earmarked for Asia including India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Maldives, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, Papua New Guinea, Taiwan, and the Pacific Islands.

The first trance of donated doses will come from a stockpiled mix of Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson’s shots.

The administration said on Thursday (Jun 3) it is not still ready to announce where the 60 million AstraZeneca doses will go, because the FDA safety review is still pending.

U.S President Joe Biden had said in late April that the US would send 60 million doses of AstraZeneca‘s vaccine abroad by July 4 .

The FDA is still determining whether the AstraZeneca doses made by contract manufacturer Emergent BioSolutions are contaminated.

Workers at a Baltimore plant run by Emergent BioSolutions, a manufacturing partner to Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, reportedly mixed up the vaccines’ ingredients several weeks ago.

Federal officials had attributed the mistake to human error.

The new plant was enlisted by Federal government last year to produce both Johnson & Johnson’s and AstraZeneca’s vaccines.

In Jun 2020, Emergent BioSolutions won a $628 million deal with the U.S. government to scale production of targeted COVID-19 vaccine candidates to make "tens to hundreds of millions" of doses available through 2021

However it what could potentially be a positive development for India and Serum Institute of India, the White House also announced that the government is removing Defence Production Act priority ratings for vaccines from AstraZeneca, Novavax and Sanofi given that US is confident of its domestic vaccine supply situation.