Biden on way to tour Pfizer manufacturing facility in Portage
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Feb. 19—PORTAGE — President Joe Biden is making his first trip to Michigan as president Friday, heading to Portage to visit the Pfizer campus that's manufacturing the COVID-19 vaccine.
Biden is expected to land in Kalamazoo shortly before 2 p.m. and then head to Portage, where he is set to tour the Pfizer facility, meet with the workers who are producing the vaccine and deliver remarks, according to the White House.
U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, and potentially Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will join Biden for the Pfizer visit.
The Delaware Democrat announced Friday morning a $2 billion pledge to COVAX, the coronavirus vaccine initiative that aims to distribute vaccine doses to 92 low- and middle-income countries. This is a policy shift from the Trump administration.
Biden told world leaders about the funding on a virtual call with G7 leaders. He promised another $2 billion would be released to the alliance, contingent on contributions from other nations.
"We must cooperate if we're going to defeat COVID-19 everywhere," Biden told the Munich Security Conference from the White House.
Winter weather postponed Biden's trip to Michigan, which was originally scheduled for Thursday. Severe storms have also slowed the delivery of 6 million vaccine doses across the country — the result of three days of delayed shipping, the White House said Friday.
All 50 states have been affected, though some were able to cover the gap by relying on existing inventory, White House senior COVID adviser Andy Slavitt said at a briefing.
Part of the problem is that contract workers have been snowed in and unable to get to work to package and ship vaccine kits, Slavitt said. Road closures have also held up deliveries at different points, and over 2,000 vaccine sites are located in areas with power outages and unable to receive doses, he added.
Federal officials don't want to ship doses to sites where they can't be kept cold or would potentially expire, he said.
"The vaccines are sitting safe and sound in our factories and hubs safe and sound, waiting to be shipped out as soon as the weather allows," Slavitt said, adding that the backlogged doses will be delivered in the next week, including Saturday deliveries.
"We expect we will be able to manage both this backlog and the new production coming online next week."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had notified Michigan on Wednesday of shipment delays due to weather conditions of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
State officials urged residents to confirm their appointments prior to traveling and to have patience as providers seek to reschedule any appointments.
In Portage, Biden is expected to tout the progress his administration has made on expanding the supply of COVID vaccines nationwide since taking office a month ago.
Last week, Biden announced that he expects to have enough vaccine — 600 million doses — available to vaccinate every American by the end of July, including 300 million doses from Pfizer.
The boost in supply came after his administration approached Pfizer and Moderna and urged them to produce more vaccine and more rapidly, he said this week, adding that his team did so by triggering the Defense Production Act of 1950. The law lets the government nationalize commercial production in emergency situations.
Pfizer's Portage facility employs approximately 2,800 people and has employees working in three shifts, without stopping the production lines for breaks or holidays, so that the operation runs continuously, a spokesman said.
The company has added suppliers and contract manufacturers since December, improved production lines, doubled batch sizes and increased the yield per batch, according to the company. This includes expanding the supply of raw material from existing suppliers and bringing on new suppliers.
The Portage site was established in 1948, and the 1,300-acre facility is the largest manufacturing site in Pfizer's network, a spokesman said, noting the site is the sole U.S. finishing plant manufacturing Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine.
In addition to Pfizer's Portage site, the drug maker is producing the vaccine in St. Louis, Missouri, and Andover, Massachusetts.
Federal officials boosted weekly allocations of vaccine doses to the states from 11 million doses last week to 13.5 million doses this week — contributing to a 57% jump in vaccine allocations in the first four weeks that Biden has been in office.
The administration also doubled the weekly vaccine supply to local pharmacies from 1 million to 2 million doses.
That has helped to increase the number of doses administered nationally from an average of 900,000 a day in mid-January to 1.7 million a day for the last week, according to the White House.
In Michigan, 1.6 million doses of vaccine have been administered and reported to the state health agency, covering nearly 14% of the state population with at least one dose. Roughly 500,000 Michigan residents having received both shots of the two-dose vaccine.
Biden last visited Michigan the weekend before the Nov. 3 election, when he made stops in Flint and Detroit. Biden won the state over former President Donald Trump 51% to 48%.
