Why Even Presidential Pressure Might Not Get More Vaccine to Market Faster

(By Liz Szabo, Sarah Jane Tribble, Arthur Allen and Jay Hancock for Kaiser Health News)

Americans are dying of covid-19 by the thousands, but efforts to ramp up production of potentially lifesaving vaccines are hitting a brick wall.

Vaccine makers Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech are running their factories full tilt and are under enormous pressure to expand production or collaborate with other drug companies to set up additional assembly lines. That pressure is only growing as new viral variants of the virus threaten to launch the country into a deadlier phase of the pandemic.

President Joe Biden has said he plans to invoke the Cold War-era authority of the Defense Production Act to provide more vaccines to millions of Americans. Consumer advocates — who had called for Donald Trump to use the Defense Production Act more aggressively as president — are now asking Biden to do the same.  Continue reading article here…

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

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