Biden to announce plans to secure 100M more J&J vaccine doses

President Biden will announce plans on Wednesday to direct the Department of Health and Human Services to secure 100 million more doses of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, a White House official confirmed.

Biden is expected to make the announcement during a meeting with executives from the pharmaceutical giant and Merck. The plans were first reported by The New York Times. 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki addressed the plans at a briefing Wednesday afternoon.

“He is doing this because in a wartime effort, which is what we consider this, we need maximum flexibility. We want to be oversupplied and overprepared,” Psaki told reporters. She said the new supply would also help the administration prepare for potential unexpected challenges, or new needs in the vaccination efforts.

Psaki also noted that officials have yet to determine which vaccines are most effective on children, to understand the impact of variants, or to understand the need for booster shots.

“We want to be overprepared,” Psaki said.

Biden announced last week that the U.S. would have enough vaccines for all American adults by the end of May, a condensed time frame from his previous prediction of July.

But senior administration officials told the Times that the White House is trying to prepare for unpredicted challenges that could disrupt vaccine production.

The officials told the newspaper that they expected the Johnson & Johnson doses to be delivered in the second half of this year.

The president is hosting a meeting with Johnson & Johnson and Merck on Wednesday to highlight the partnership announced last week to produce the former’s vaccine.

Biden said last week that he invoked the Defense Production Act to equip Merck facilities to safely manufacture the vaccine, and Johnson & Johnson plans to operate its plants full time to increase supply.

The president had originally scheduled a trip to Emergent BioSolutions in Baltimore. The trip to Emergent — which is helping produce the Johnson & Johnson vaccine —  was cancelled amid scrutiny that the federal government spent half of its budget for the Strategic National Stockpile over the past decade on contracts for Emergent’s anthrax vaccines.

— Morgan Chalfant contributed to this report, which was updated at 2:55 p.m.