Biden boosting world vaccine sharing commitment to 80m doses

WASHINGTON (AP):

President Joe Biden said on Monday that the US will share an additional 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines with the world in the coming six weeks as domestic demand for shots drops and global disparities in distribution have grown more evident.

The doses will come from existing production of Pfizer, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson vaccine stocks, marking the first time that US-controlled doses of vaccines authorised for use in the country will be shared overseas. It will boost the global vaccine-sharing commitment from the US to 80 million.

“We know America will never be fully safe until the pandemic that’s raging globally is under control,” Biden said at the White House.

The announcement comes on top of the Biden’s administration’s prior commitment to share about 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is not yet authorised for use in the US, by the end of June. The AstraZeneca doses will be available to ship once they clear a safety review by the Food and Drug Administration.

Biden also tapped COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients to lead the administration’s efforts to share doses with the world.

“Our nation’s going to be the arsenal of vaccines for the rest of the world,” Biden said. He added that compared to other countries like Russia and China, which have sought to leverage their domestically produced doses, “we will not use our vaccines to secure favours from other countries”.

The Biden administration hasn’t yet said how the new commitment of vaccines will be shared or which countries will receive them.

To date, the US has shared about 4.5 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine with Canada and Mexico. Additional doses of the Pfizer vaccine manufactured in the US have begun to be exported as the company has met its initial contract commitments to the federal government.