President Biden scrapped a trip to a vaccine manufacturer on Wednesday after a damning report said the company’s lobby left federal stash of medical supplies unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden was supposed to visit a facility in Baltimore run by Emergent BioSolutions, but he canceled the trip after Sunday’s report.
‘We just felt [the White House] was a more appropriate place to hold the meeting, ”said White House press secretary Jen Psaki during her daily press conference on Monday.
“The administration will conduct a comprehensive review and audit of the national stock,” she said.
Johnson & Johnson and Merck CEOs are expected to meet with Biden to discuss the rollout of the third US-approved COVID-19 vaccine. Emergent works with those companies under a federal Operation Warp Speed contract. It is unclear whether an Emergent representative will attend the White House meeting after the venue changes.
Emergent’s long-term sale of an anthrax vaccine, backed by a $ 3 million annual lobby budget since 2010, has used up much of the Strategic National Stockpile’s pre-pandemic purchases, the New York Times reported.
Last year, when nurses carried garbage bags due to a shortage of protective clothing, the company sold $ 626 million worth of anthrax vaccines, which are on the shelves to spoil if not used, to the government.
The anthrax vaccine only slightly improves patient outcomes if it supplements cheap antibiotics, according to the report. But the company’s anthrax vaccine sucked up 40 percent of national stock funds from 2010 to 2018, even though there hasn’t been an anthrax attack since a 2001 letter campaign that killed five people.
Emergent reportedly earns a 75 percent profit from the anthrax vaccine, the license it purchased from the state of Michigan in 1998 before the price was increased. It would have undermined a rival company’s efforts to produce a second vaccine.