Managing the shortage is an early challenge for Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has pledged to restore “morale and trust” at the department.
At least 13 foreign governments offered to inoculate U.S. officials serving abroad with their own supplies of U.S.-made Moderna and Pfizer vaccines — a gesture the State Department has already accepted, said senior U.S. officials. The department is evaluating offers from at least eight other countries that are willing to do the same.
In Russia, some State Department personnel appealed to Moscow for doses of its Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine after Washington could not promise the delivery of U.S.-made vaccine doses in the near future, officials said.
The Sputnik vaccine has not been approved by the World Health Organization or the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The State Department is not recommending its employees take it but is permitting them to make their own health decisions as the pandemic claims more than 2.4 million lives worldwide.
“It’s embarrassing for the world’s richest country to require the charity of other nations when it comes to vaccines,” said one U.S. diplomat posted to the Middle East, “especially when you consider that the best vaccines were made in the U.S.”
That’s not the only indignity.
In China, some U.S. personnel have complained about being subjected to anal swab tests for the coronavirus by Chinese authorities, said U.S. officials. The invasive technique has been heralded by Chinese doctors as more effective than a nasal swab despite the unpleasant nature of the procedure. In response to questions about the anal swab testing of U.S. officials, a State Department spokesman said the department was “evaluating all reasonable options” to address the issue with the aim of preserving the “dignity” of U.S. officials “consistent with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.”
The State Department, like other U.S. agencies, is at the mercy of the Department of Health and Human Services for how much vaccine it receives. The State Department requested 315,000 doses but has received only 23 percent of that in three separate tranches, said officials, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal operations.
The State Department’s acting undersecretary for management, Carol Perez, acknowledged in a memo to employees this month that “there has been some confusion surrounding the Department’s distribution of COVID-19 vaccines as we work to quickly provide the vaccines to our workforce.”
Perez and other senior officials told The Post that they were working to address concerns of diplomats in the field about the vaccines.
“The health and safety of our people is a top priority for the department, and we are committed to providing our workforce timely, accurate information about vaccine distribution,” Perez said. “This is a very fluid situation, and we understand employees are eager for information.”
In his first address to staff in January, Blinken noted that the pandemic had claimed the lives of five American State Department employees and 42 locally employed staff around the world. “Many more have gotten sick,” he said. “The president is committed to getting us through it as quickly as possible.”
Some diplomats expressed sympathy for State Department leaders during an unprecedented crisis.
“The Department has done a decent job of administering vaccines under very difficult circumstances,” said a representative of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), the union that represents U.S. diplomats. “That said, the department could do a better job at communicating.”
To address the communication concerns, Perez and the department’s chief medical officer, Larry G. Padget, held a conference call Feb. 2 in which 900 U.S. officials phoned in from around the world.
A lingering complaint among some U.S. diplomats is their belief that the vaccine…
Read More: Vaccine shortage prompts U.S. diplomats to request doses from foreign governments, including Russia