Since he took office, President Joe Biden has made two promises about the global vaccination effort: The U.S. would lead, and geopolitics would play no part.
Yet while the U.S. has so far donated more doses abroad than any other country, two recent incidents have raised questions about how administration officials are determining where those shots should go, POLITICO’s Erin Banco reports.
The first stems from a trip former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson took to Myanmar last month. The Democrat had gotten State Department permission to travel there to try to free an imprisoned U.S. journalist — a mission that ended in success.
Yet Richardson also spoke with Myanmar’s military junta about the logistics of getting U.S. doses to the country. The U.S. is now weighing sending vaccines to Myanmar.
The State Department insists Richardson had no authority to represent the government or make any vaccine promises.
But his discussions came after three senators made their own trip to Taiwan in June, which raised eyebrows among senior officials working on the global vaccination effort. After flying to Taipei to show support for the country amid threats from China, the senators announced the U.S. would donate 750,000 doses.
The White House had negotiated that pledge outside the administration’s central distribution process, catching others in the government off guard.
The episodes underscore the long-running confusion over how to allocate vaccines abroad. Early guidelines were never formalized, and the criteria have often shifted.
The White House, meanwhile, has effectively taken over the process, two senior officials said — making allocations with little transparency or involvement of other agencies.
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