BIDEN AIMS TO IMPLEMENT ‘WARTIME LAW’ FOR COVID-19 VACCINE

Wed 03 March 2021:

US President Joe Biden has announced that Merck & Co will help to produce rival Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot Covid-19 vaccine in a partnership similar to those seen during World War Two, Reuters has reported. A wartime law is being invoked to require Merck & Co to help produce the newly-approved vaccine.

“As a consequence of the stepped-up process that I’ve ordered and just outlined,” explained Biden, “this country will have enough vaccine supply — I’ll say it again — for every adult in America by the end of May.”

According to the New York Times, Merck is the world’s second-largest vaccine manufacturer. Its own attempt at a coronavirus vaccine was unsuccessful.

US officials described Biden’s vision of a wartime effort to fight the coronavirus as being similar to the manufacturing campaigns in place when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president.