President Joe Biden’s administration does not have the money to fund a potential fourth COVID vaccine booster for all Americans, according to administration officials who spoke on the issue on March 21. The statement comes even as some countries have announced placing orders for the fourth COVID vaccine booster.
“Right now, we don’t have enough money for fourth doses if they’re called for. We don’t have the funding if we were to need a variant-specific vaccine in the future,” said Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus coordinator.
White House officials also pointed out that the Omicron variant had evaded some “immunity” protection alleged by the current COVID vaccines.
The head of Kaiser Family Foundation, a global health policy for the organization, Jen Kates, said that the country would have to purchase hundreds of millions of COVID vaccine boosters to ensure everyone gets a shot.
She said the Biden administration would need to purchase approximately 750 million more doses to cover all Americans.
Kates added that they had reviewed various alternate scenarios like lowering their projection to 70% of Americans who would want to be vaccinated with the fourth COVID vaccine booster instead of 100%. Even with the lower target, Kates said that there are not enough doses.
Approximately 217 million Americans are considered to be “fully vaccinated” – representing about 65% of the entire population, according to data from the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention. Two hundred million of those vaccinated received the mRNA doses manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech. Only 97 million people in the country have received a booster shot – representing 29% of the population.
Last week Pfizer, Moderna, and BioNTech filed for emergency authorization of second COVID vaccine booster shots. Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines are targeting people who are 65 years and above, while Moderna is targeting authorization for all adults.