Biden Cancels Visit to Vaccine Maker After Times Report on Its Tactics
The White House scrapped a trip to a vaccine plant in Baltimore run by Emergent BioSolutions after a New York Times investigation into the company.
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Chris Hamby
WASHINGTON — President Biden on Monday canceled a visit to a coronavirus vaccine plant run by Emergent BioSolutions after The New York Times published a lengthy investigation into how the company gained outsize influence over the nation’s emergency medical reserve.
Instead of visiting Emergent’s facility in Baltimore on Wednesday, the president will convene a meeting at the White House with executives of the pharmaceutical giants Merck & Co. and Johnson & Johnson, who were also to attend the session in Baltimore, White House officials said. Merck and Emergent are each separately partnering with Johnson & Johnson to manufacture that company’s coronavirus vaccine.
“We just felt it was a more appropriate place to have the meeting,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters.
Emergent has more than $600 million in contracts with the federal government to manufacture coronavirus vaccines and to expand its “fill-and-finish” capacity for completing the process of manufacturing vaccines and therapeutics. A senior administration official said only executives from Merck and Johnson & Johnson would attend the White House session on Wednesday.
An Emergent spokeswoman did not immediately respond on Monday to questions about the cancellation. The spokeswoman, Nina DeLorenzo, had previously defended the company’s business with the government in written responses to questions, saying, “When almost no one else would invest in preparing to protect the American public from grave threats, Emergent did, and the country is better prepared today because of it.”
The Times investigation focused on the emergency reserve, the Strategic National Stockpile, which became infamous during the coronavirus pandemic for its lack of critical supplies such as N95 masks and other personal protective equipment.
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