Biden promises vaccine supply for all US adults by end of May

The United States will have enough coronavirus vaccine doses for every adult in the country by the end of May, President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday, as production of a third vaccine is set to ramp up.

During a news conference at the White House, Biden said he had invoked a wartime production law to require pharmaceutical company Merck & Co to help produce a newly approved vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson.

The US already had contracts with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to supply 300 million COVID-19 vaccine doses – enough to vaccinate all adults by the end of July – but the addition of a third viable vaccine and additional manufacturing capacity pushed that timeline forward.

“We’re now on track to have enough vaccine supply for every adult in America by the end of May,” Biden told reporters.

The US has been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, but infections and coronavirus-related deaths have been declining in recent weeks amid a push to inoculate more Americans and put stricter public health regulations in place.