White House Press Secretary References Issues With Providing COVID-19 Vaccines To Cuba

The White House
Washington DC
27 August 2021

Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki

Q Understood. And can I ask about -- the U.S. has donated over 3 million COVID vaccines to Afghanistan. The U.N. put out a report this week saying that the number of vaccinations in Afghanistan has significantly dropped since the Taliban took over. Does the White House or does the U.S. government have any indication of what’s happened to those vaccines? Are they in the hands of the Taliban, and are they still being distributed? Or is there a concern that the Taliban might try to sell those doses?

MS. PSAKI: Well, we have not worked with the Taliban as a -- as the government. Right? And a lot of these assistance is often distributed through humanitarian organizations or others who work through COVAX. I would have to check and see what the implementation and mechanisms are, but we are quite careful and very focused on vaccines not -- getting into the right hands. And for individual -- for countries we work with -- and remember, this was an issue with Cuba, right? -- we need to have mechanisms to ensure that they are getting out to the populations who need to get access to the vaccines.