Vaccine diplomacy: the United States will donate 20 million doses

WASHINGTON.- Joe Biden’s government will ship 20 million doses of licensed Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines to other countries by the end of June., a delivery that will be added to the already announced donation of up to 60 million doses of AstraZeneca, and that will finish putting the United States at the forefront of the fight in global vaccine diplomacy which until now had Russia and China as the main players.

The new US donation comes as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage in India and Latin America, and as Europe continues to try to ramp up its slow vaccination campaign.

“We are going one step further to help the world,” Biden said., when the measure was announced, in a message to the White House, which, as always, he toasted accompanied by Vice President Kamala Harris, standing next to him, behind.

With the new vaccine donation, the White House will make available a total of 80 million doses of vaccine in the coming weeks for the countries most affected by the coronavirus pandemic, 13% of the vaccines produced by the country until end of June., underlined the North American president.

The Biden administration has also supported a temporary suspension of patents for coronavirus vaccines to allow other countries to manufacture them, a historic turning point in US policy that has garnered praise but also a setback in Europe and the United States. Pharmaceutical industry.

“These are more vaccines than any country has shared to date. Five more times. That’s more than Russia and China, which donated 15 million doses. There is a lot of talk about the influence of China and Russia with vaccines. We want to run the world with our values, ”Biden said.

“Just like in World War II, the United States was the arsenal of democracy in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, our nation will be the arsenal of vaccines with the rest of the world”, reiterated the president, one of his main sentences in recent weeks.

Biden said they won’t be looking for “favors” with vaccines, but will work with the Covax mechanism and other partners so that vaccines are distributed fairly and science follows.

Biden’s announcement came shortly after a World Health Organization (WHO) press conference, in which Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said countries with high rates of high vaccinations like the United States had to do more to help countries hardest hit by the pandemic. , a dynamic which, according to experts, endangers the global fight against the coronavirus.

“There is a huge upward disconnect where in some countries with the highest vaccination rates there seems to be a mentality that the pandemic is over, while others are experiencing huge waves of infection.” , said the head of the WHO.

The global immunization campaign showed wide disparity, with high immunization rates in developed countries, which accounted for the largest amount of vaccine produced to date, and virtually no progress in the most relegated countries. Experts estimate that the world will need at least 11 billion vaccines to overcome the pandemic, but less than 2 billion have been produced so far due to bottlenecks in production chains.

Argentina is one of the countries that hopes to benefit from donations from the United States. Alberto Fernández’s government has made efforts in Washington to ensure that some of the doses to be donated by the United States reach the country, where immunization progress has been below expectations.