Photo/Illutration Taro Kono, center, the administrative reform minister, visits a mass vaccination center operated by the Self-Defense Forces in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward on July 26. (Pool)

The central government is backtracking on a planned reduction in the supply of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to local governments with excess stock after the municipalities pushed back.

Taro Kono, the administrative reform minister who is in charge of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, said on July 27 that the government decided it would not cut the supply of the vaccine, jointly developed by U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc. and its German partner, BioNTech, for the latter half of August.

Osaka, Nagoya and other municipalities targeted for the cut in Pfizer shipments for the first half of August had bristled over the cutback and called on the central government to reconsider.

Kono said he heard from municipalities that they cannot predict how many vaccine doses will be delivered if the central government reduces the supply at the last minute.

“A drop in the base supply could force municipalities to give up on allocating the doses to some of the places they planned to,” he said.

The central government had previously said it would ship about 11.7 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine every two weeks in August and September, and distribute 80 percent of the doses as a “base supply” to prefectural governments in proportion to their populations.

The government subsequently decided to cut Pfizer shipments by 10 percent for local governments with more than six weeks’ worth of excess stock to deal with a supply crunch. Kono said on July 7 that the reduction in vaccine supply would start with the shipment for the first half of August.

But he announced at a news conference on July 21 that the central government would leave all the decisions on allocating the Pfizer doses to municipalities up to prefectural governments from September onward.

The central government moved the schedule forward by announcing it would effectively retract the planned cut in vaccine shipments for the latter half of August.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga asked Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla to provide some of the 20 million doses of the vaccine to Japan in October and November ahead of schedule during their meeting on July 23, according to an official close to the prime minister.

Kono also revealed the National Governors’ Association on July 27 reported the inoculation program for health care workers, who have been vaccinated as a top priority group since mid-February, has been completed.

“All prefectures had finished inoculating health care workers by July 23,” he said.

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