The Biden administration is slated to purchase 500 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer to donate globally.
What We Know:
- Previously, the Biden administration’s goal was to distribute 80 million doses worldwide by the end of the month. However, global demand for richer countries with excess doses to distribute has increased significantly.
- 200 million of the vaccines are going to be distributed through COVAX, a World Health Organization-backed initiative. 300 million will be distributed in the first half of 2022. All of these vaccines are going to low or middle-income countries.
- Britain is hosting the Group of Seven summit, which will primarily focus on how to close the vaccine gap and end the pandemic. Currently, more than half the populations of the U.S. and Britain have received at least the first dose of the vaccine. In Africa, this number is less than 2%. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, told reporters, “The president is focused on helping to vaccinate the world because he believes it is the right thing to do; it’s what Americans do in times of need.”
- Jennifer Nuzzo, epidemiologist and senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, applauded the effort, saying it “sends a profound signal in terms of U.S. commitment to global health security”. The hope is that, by announcing this at G7, other countries in the EU will be encouraged to do the same. International Health Organizations warn that the virus needs to be curtailed in order to prevent more dangerous variants.
- As the Biden administration looks globally, vaccination rates in the U.S. have begun to drop. This decrease, coupled with exposure to a new variant called “delta”, has been a cause for concern. The ability for this and other new strains to spread due to a stagnation in vaccination is on the mind of health officials. Despite this, they said the global effort needs to take priority.
- COVAX aimed to deliver 2 billion doses by the end of the year and vaccinate 20% of the populations of countries in need. These hopes have seemed unattainable due to a lack of funding and a severe supply crunch. To date, they have delivered just under 82 million doses to 129 countries.
- The efforts of the Biden administration to distribute vaccines globally have garnered both worldwide and bipartisan support. Republican Senator Richard Burr stated, “This is exactly what the federal government should be doing: working with the companies who developed lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines to make them available to the rest of the world.”
Biden is expected to announce his plan at the G7 meeting with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. “We have to end COVID-19, not just at home, which we’re doing, but everywhere,” Biden said.
