US to donate 500 M more COVID vaccines to other countries- Biden
“This is an all-hands-on-deck crisis,” Biden said. “America will become the arsenal for vaccines as we were the arsenal for democracy in World War II.”
The pledge from Biden at the summit, held virtually from the White House, brings the total US commitment of donated vaccines to 1.1 billion — more than the rest of the world combined.
“The US has already shipped 160 million of these doses to 100 countries,” the White House said in a statement. “For every one shot we’ve put in an American arm to date, we are now donating three shots globally.”
The new tranche of half a billion vaccines will be from Pfizer and aimed at poorer countries.
Biden was also due to challenge world leaders to vaccinate 70 percent of every country by September 2022, the White House said.
“We need other high income countries to deliver on their own ambitions,” he said in his opening remarks. “We’re not going to solve this crisis with half measures.”Biden stressed that the surge of vaccines must only be donated, with no “political” strings attached — a veiled dig at China in particular.
The United States and other wealthy countries have been criticized by the World Health Organization for their plans to roll out booster shots for elderly and high-risk populations, while much of the world faces a severe shortage in doses.But a senior US administration official told reporters that Washington is “proving that you can take care of your own, while helping others as well.”On Tuesday, in his first speech to the UN as President, Biden told delegates that the United States had put more than $15 billion towards the global COVID response and shipped more than 160 million doses to other countries.
Despite the development of safe and highly effective vaccines in record-breaking time, huge disparities exist between countries with ample supply and others that have barely begun their immunization campaign.Just 3.6 percent of Africa’s eligible population has been inoculated — compared with an average of more than 60 percent in Western Europe. – NDTV