Biden administration reportedly planning to purchase another 100 million doses of Johnson & Johnson's vaccine

President Biden is reportedly set to announce plans for the United States to purchase another 100 million doses of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine.

Biden will announce Wednesday that he intends to secure an additional 100 million doses of the single-shot vaccine by the end of the year, The New York Times reports. He'll reportedly announce the plans during a meeting with executives from Johnson & Johnson and Merck, and officials reportedly said the doses would be delivered "sometime in the second half of this year."

The two companies recently announced they'll be partnering to make the COVID-19 vaccine, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration and comes with the key benefit of requiring only one dose. Following Johnson & Johnson's FDA approval, Biden said he now expected there will be enough COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States for all American adults by the end of May, although he noted that it's "not enough to have the vaccine supply, we need vaccinators — people to put the shots in people's arms."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Biden plans to direct the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate with Johnson & Johnson for the additional 100 million doses, hoping to have "enough on hand to vaccinate children and, if necessary, administer booster doses or reformulate the vaccine to combat emerging variants of the virus," the Times reported. The White House, CNN reports, previously told governors on Tuesday "to expect fewer than 400,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine next week, far below what they initially expected would be available."