Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said the administration will conduct an audit of the Strategic National Stockpile after an investigation by The New York Times found that more than half of its annual budget has been spent on anthrax vaccines from Emergent BioSolutions rather than supplies needed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, the Times reported March 8.
Decisions on how to spend the national stockpile's half-billion dollar annual budget are supposed to be made based on assessments by government officials on how best to save American lives, the Times reported. But the Times investigation — which included more than 40,000 pages of documents and interviews with more than 60 people knowledgeable about the stockpile — found budget decisions were largely driven by the financial interests of some biotech companies, including Emergent.
In the last decade, the U.S. has spent nearly half of the stockpile's annual budget on Emergent's anthrax vaccines, the investigation found. Funding for pandemic preparedness supplies, such as N95 masks and other personal protective equipment, repeatedly lost out, the Times reported.
After the investigation was published March 8, Ms. Psaki said, "The administration is going to undertake a comprehensive review and audit of the national stockpile," the Times reported.
President Joe Biden canceled a visit to an Emergent BioSolutions facility scheduled for March 10.
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