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The move comes as the United States grapples with its own shortages.
President Joe Biden plans to announce on Friday that the United States will contribute $ 2 billion to a UN-backed program to distribute doses of COVID-19 vaccine to people in the world’s poorest countries, according to senior officials. officials of the Biden administration.
Congress had already allocated funds in December to the US Agency for International Development to provide Gavi, an international vaccine distribution alliance. Congress provided a total of $ 4 billion and officials said the United States would give the rest to Gavi during this year and 2022.
The move, which the White House said Biden intended to announce at a virtual meeting of Group of Seven leaders, comes as the United States struggles to not have enough doses yet. to immunize their own population, although the situation in the poorest countries is much worse. .
To date, 10 countries have administered 75% of all COVID-19 vaccines, while more than 130 countries have yet to receive a single dose, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
Many countries are unable to compete with the wealthier like the United States to purchase the limited amounts of vaccine doses available from manufacturers. In collaboration with the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations foundation, Gavi is leading a global immunization initiative called COVAX that aims to address this disparity by distributing doses more equitably.
Even though then President Donald Trump enacted a December bill allocating the $ 4 billion to Gavi, he had previously refused to support COVAX and his administration also decided to cut ties with the Organization. world health.
Biden has radically reversed this approach, keeping the United States at the WHO and making tackling the COVID-19 pandemic around the world a national security priority.
But ending the global epidemic has proved complicated with the limited availability of vaccine doses.
The United States has so far purchased 600 million doses of the vaccine, but it has no plans to give any to other countries while – as Biden noted in a Jan.21 memorandum. – “there is sufficient supply in the United States”.
A senior administration official said Thursday that “this commitment to COVAX has no impact on the vaccination program in the United States.”
“While we are unable to share vaccine doses at this time as we focus on US vaccinations and gun injections,” the official said, “we are working hard to support COVAX, strengthen the global immunization around the world determine the timeframe for which we will have sufficient supplies in the United States and can give surplus vaccines. “
China and Russia, meanwhile, have donated doses of their local COVID-19 vaccines to partners and developing countries as a form of “vaccine diplomacy.” The United States has not yet followed suit.
Administration officials have argued that immunizing people abroad protects the health of Americans at home.
“Lowering the burden of disease decreases the risk for everyone in the world, including Americans,” the official said. “It also decreases the risk of variants occurring, like the ones we are seeing now. So it is extremely important to advance vaccination globally, while of course we prioritize vaccinations here at home.”
The official said the first tranche of $ 2 billion would be given “within days to weeks” and “ideally by the end of this month”. Of the additional $ 2 billion, the United States plans to pay out the first $ 500 million “quickly enough” to “boost some of those initial doses,” but it intends, at least initially, to withhold the rest to encourage other countries. to make promises on their own, the official said.
“This pandemic will only end if we end it globally,” the official added.
ABC News’ Conor Finnegan contributed reporting.
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