Sixty million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine ready for shipping from US

The vaccine is currently still not approved by the FDA for emergency use in the USA, and, due to a change of laboratory, will have to undergo further testing before it is cleared even for export.

White House pandemic coordinator Jeff Zients said the following in a statement, according to CP24:

"Given the strong portfolio of vaccines that the U.S. already has and that have been authorized by the FDA, and given that the AstraZeneca vaccine is not authorized for use in the U.S., we do not need to use the AstraZeneca vaccine here during the next several months. Therefore the U.S. is looking at options to share the AstraZeneca doses with other countries as they become available."

Large numbers of doses are expected to go to neighbouring Canada and Mexico, although they could potentially wind up anywhere in the world. The above two countries have already received over 2 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

AstraZeneca currently is under contract by the US government to produce 300 million doses for them, although they have been plagued by production issues.