Now that the US is swim­ming in Covid-19 vac­cines and the sup­ply has of­fi­cial­ly eclipsed the de­mand, it’s time for Amer­i­ca to lead the world and start ship­ping these ex­cess dos­es to coun­tries that des­per­ate­ly need them.

Un­like the IP waiv­er at the World Trade Or­ga­ni­za­tion, which Biden now sup­ports and will like­ly take years to trans­late in­to ac­tu­al shots in arms, the US could eas­i­ly do­nate just a tiny frac­tion of the more than 60 mil­lion dos­es of Pfiz­er, Mod­er­na and J&J vac­cines sit­ting on Amer­i­can shelves right now.

Low-in­come coun­tries have re­ceived just 0.3% of all vac­cine dos­es in the world.

The sit­u­a­tion has be­come so dire in Bo­livia that its gov­ern­ment is turn­ing to a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny that doesn’t even make vac­cines, and Bo­livia will on­ly be able to ob­tain those if the com­pa­ny can ac­quire a com­pul­so­ry li­cense from the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment.

Mean­while, the US on Thurs­day will like­ly be­gin vac­ci­nat­ing mil­lions of ado­les­cents, many of whom aren’t like­ly to get se­vere cas­es of Covid-19, or who live in ar­eas where Covid-19 in­fec­tions are wan­ing.

Texas has even gone so far as to say it will no longer track if it’s wast­ing vac­cine dos­es. The state ba­si­cal­ly ad­vised providers to waste dos­es, telling them to “vac­ci­nate any­one who wants to be vac­ci­nat­ed, even if that means open­ing a new vial for that per­son with­out know­ing whether all dos­es will be used.”

More than 150 mil­lion Amer­i­cans (or 58% of adults) have now re­ceived at least one dose of vac­cine. Dozens of neigh­bor­ing coun­tries in Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca haven’t even ad­min­is­tered 1 mil­lion dos­es.

CO­V­AX, a world­wide ini­tia­tive fo­cused on eq­ui­table ac­cess to Covid-19 vac­cines, is do­ing its best to help, ship­ping over 58 mil­lion vac­cine dos­es to 122 par­tic­i­pants. In March, the ini­tia­tive an­nounced the de­liv­ery of 2.3 mil­lion vac­cine dos­es to Bo­livia, El Sal­vador, Guatemala, Hon­duras, Ja­maica, Nicaragua and Pe­ru.

But the US could dou­ble that fig­ure with a ship­ment to­mor­row, and nev­er even blink at the loss of 5 mil­lion vac­cine dos­es.

Biden made beat­ing the coro­n­avirus his top pri­or­i­ty, but that win won’t of­fi­cial­ly oc­cur un­til the rest of the world can con­tain their own out­breaks.

David Kessler

So far, the US has shipped just 4 mil­lion As­traZeneca Covid-19 vac­cine dos­es, in­clud­ing 2.5 mil­lion to Mex­i­co and 1.5 mil­lion to Cana­da, ac­cord­ing to tes­ti­mo­ny Tues­day from David Kessler, Biden’s Covid-19 CSO. Those dos­es aren’t au­tho­rized for use in the US, and like­ly nev­er would’ve been used in the US any­ways.

Kessler said he’s been on the phone with As­traZeneca reg­u­lar­ly over the last sev­er­al weeks to dis­cuss ship­ping about 60 mil­lion more of its dos­es out­side the US. The on­ly prob­lem — the dos­es were made at the trou­bled Emer­gent BioSo­lu­tions plant in Bal­ti­more and the FDA is still work­ing to see if they’re sal­vage­able, he said.

While the FDA con­tin­ues to re­view those dos­es, the US needs to start ship­ping our Pfiz­er, Mod­er­na and J&J dos­es to our neigh­bors.

President Joe Biden made clear in his “finish the job” State of the Union address last night that one of those jobs to be finished is insulin prices.

Biden’s push again to tackle insulin prices, after Republicans rebuffed the idea last summer and just after Biden won Medicare drug price negotiations/caps via the Inflation Reduction Act, shows how heavily he’s leaning into this work.

FDA Commissioner Rob Califf joined the heads of the CDC and NIH in the hot seat today before a key House subcommittee, explaining that there needs to be a much faster, more coordinated way to oversee vaccine safety, and that foreign biopharma inspections, halted for years due to the pandemic, are slowly ramping up again.

Califf, who stressed to the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Health that the CDC also needs better data, made clear that the FDA’s ability to monitor the safety of vaccines “would also benefit greatly by a coordinated federal public health data reporting authority.”

Six weeks into his new role at the helm of Teva Pharmaceutical, Richard Francis said it’s time to “get back to growth,” starting with a good look at the company’s priorities.

The chief executive has kicked off a strategic review, he announced during Teva’s quarterly call, which will continue over the next several months and produce results sometime in the middle of 2023. That means some pipeline cuts may be in store, he told Endpoints News, while declining to offer much more detail.