U.S. President Joe Biden said Monday that the U.S. will share an additional 20 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines with the world over the next six weeks as domestic demand for shots declines and global disparities in distribution have become clearer.
The doses come from existing production of Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccine stocks. This is the first time US controlled doses of vaccines approved for use in the country are shared overseas. This will bring the global commitment to vaccine sharing from the US to 80 million.
“We know America will never be completely safe until the raging global pandemic is under control,” Biden told the White House.
America will never be completely safe as long as this pandemic rages worldwide. So today I’m announcing that we will be shipping 80 million doses of vaccine overseas over the next six weeks.
It is the right thing. It is wise to do that. It’s the strong thing to do.
– President Biden (@POTUS) May 17, 2021
The announcement comes on top of the Biden government’s previous commitment to share approximately 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is not yet approved in the US, by the end of June. The AstraZeneca cans can be shipped once a security clearance by the Food and Drug Administration is completed.
Biden also relied on Covid-19 coordinator Jeff Zients to lead the government’s efforts to share the cans with the world.
“Our nation will be the vaccine arsenal for the rest of the world,” said Biden. He added that, compared to other countries like Russia and China that have tried to leverage their domestically made doses, “we will not use our vaccines to secure favors from other countries.”
The Biden government has not yet said how the new commitment of vaccines will be shared or which countries will receive them.
To date, the US has shared approximately 4.5 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine with Canada and Mexico. Additional doses of the US-made Pfizer vaccine were exported as the company fulfilled its original contractual obligations to the federal government.
The US is under increasing pressure to share more of its vaccine supplies with the world as domestic interest in vaccines has waned.
“While vaccinations continue to rise in affluent countries, less than 1 percent of Covid-19 vaccine doses worldwide have been given to people in low-income countries,” said Tom Hart, acting CEO of the ONE campaign. “The sooner the US and other wealthy countries develop a coordinated strategy to share vaccine doses with those most at risk in the world, the sooner we will end the global pandemic for everyone.”
More than 157 million Americans have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, and 123 million are fully vaccinated against the virus. Biden hopes 160 million people in the US will be fully vaccinated by July 4th.
More than 3.3 million people have died from the coronavirus worldwide. In the United States, Covid-19 is the largest confirmed death, with more than 586,000 people.
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