White House blocking US communities from donating vaccine doses to other countries

A small group in southern California planned to donate thousands of COVID-19 vaccines to nearby Mexico, which has struggled to inoculate its population, but the White House Vaccine Task Force forbade it and destroyed the vaccine doses, The Washington Post reported.

This isn’t the first time the Biden administration has thwarted attempts to donate leftover vaccines to countries in need; White House officials have stated that the vaccine doses are federal property, which means states, local governments or other organizations are not able to donate them, according to the Post. 

The White House does have a program to donate vaccines via the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and so far the U.S. has donated 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to more than 100 different countries, according to data from the White House.

President Biden had pledged that the United States would be the “world’s arsenal of vaccines” and “play a pivotal role in fulfilling the ambitious goal of vaccinating 70 percent of the eligible population by next year,” the USAID said in a statement Thursday. 

Nevertheless, the federal government has repeatedly denied requests to donate doses on the brink of expiration to countries in need, reports the Post. 

This policy has frustrated health care workers, especially those who work along the southern border and have seen people in Mexico desperate to be vaccinated as excess doses pile up over the border in California.

“I contacted the White House Vaccine Task Force and was told it was not possible,” Eric McDonald, chief medical officer for San Diego County, told the Post.

A U.S. official who spoke to the Post anonymously said of the issue, “Given chain-of-custody considerations, moving doses out from more than 80,000 providers would involve significant legal and logistical challenges.” 

The U.S.-Mexican gap has narrowed since the summer when COVID-19 was at its peak, according to the Post, but Mexico still does not have enough doses to inoculate minors.

So far the United States has donated about 10.9 million vaccines to Mexico, which is one of the top recipients of the American vaccine donations. About 40 percent of Mexicans have been vaccinated and as of Oct.11, about 4.6 percent of COVID-19 vaccine doses have gone to waste, reports the Post, citing via federal data. 

The Hill has reached out to the White House Vaccine Task Force for comment but has not immediately heard back.