The Liberty Daily 
(The Epoch Times)—U.S. officials are going to reengage with a global vaccine group called Gavi, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told senators in Washington on June 2.
The Trump administration has been withholding money from Gavi to try to force it to make reforms, including halting distribution of vaccines containing the mercury-based preservative thimerosal.
Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that President Donald Trump asked the State Department to let Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “to play a leading role on the Gavi decision, because of his strongly held views with regards to vaccine safety.”
Trending: Microsoft Windows Has Become Spyware
The State Department is still going to take input from Kennedy and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) but the department made a decision in May that it was going to reengage with Gavi, Rubio said.
“We’d like to get this issue resolved, and an outcome that’s acceptable both to Congress and also to our goals on global health,” he said. He added later: “I wouldn’t use the word defer, but we have certainly allowed him to play a leading role in determining what we’re going to do next. But right now we’re sort of at a stage we’re going to reengage. We need to drive this to an outcome.”
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), one of the senators who has urged the administration to release congressionally appropriated funds to Gavi, asked Rubio to keep her updated.
“HHS and the State Department continue engaging directly with Gavi and remain cautiously optimistic that ongoing discussions can produce greater transparency, accountability, and a constructive path forward,” a spokesperson for HHS told The Epoch Times in an email.
Gavi did not return a request for comment by time of publication.
Gavi buys vaccines and distributes them to nations around the world. It has a stockpile of 500,000 doses of an Ebola vaccine that targets the Zaire ebolavirus.
An outbreak of Ebola caused by a different strain, for which there are no approved vaccines, is currently spreading in Africa.
Gavi and its partners have announced funding for vaccine candidates against the strain.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) told Rubio in Washington that cuts to early detection systems in Africa resulted in undetected spread of Ebola in Congo this year. Rubio said the outbreak started in a war-torn, isolated area of Congo, and “since that time, our response has been very quick and very rapid.”
The State Department said May 29 it has committed more than $162 million to combat the outbreak.
