Expert panel recommends U.S. join international vaccine pool, contribute vaccine to low-income nations

Expert panel recommends U.S. join international vaccine pool A panel convened by the National Academies has recommended the U.S. join an international Covid-19 vaccine pool. Helen Branswell STAT

The United States should join an international Covid-19 vaccine pool and should contribute 10% of the country’s vaccine for redistribution to low-income countries, a panel of experts convened by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommended Friday.

The group’s final report, the Framework for Equitable Allocation of COVID-19 Vaccine, suggested the country would both increase its chances of access to effective Covid-19 vaccines and regain a position of global health leadership if it were to join the COVAX Facility, a vaccine purchasing pool being set up by the WHO, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Coalition for Emergency Preparedness Innovations, known as CEPI for short.

“Amid the catastrophic COVID-19 pandemic, the United States should consider it a moral duty, as a leading nation and member of the G7/G20, to embrace its humanitarian legacy by re-engaging and leading on the international stage in support of lower-resourced nations,” said the report from the 18-member committee on equitable allocation of vaccine for the novel coronavirus.

Bill Foege, co-chair of the panel and former CDC director, told STAT he had anticipated there might be some division among members of the panel on the issue of joining the COVAX Facility, which at least 156 countries have joined. There was none, he said....

The White House has publicly rejected the idea that the United States might join the global vaccines pool, because of the WHO’s leadership position in the work. President Trump blames the WHO for mishandling the Covid-19 pandemic and has served notice that the U.S. will pull out of the global health body next July.  ...