[ad_1]
WASHINGTON – President Biden will announce a total of $ 4 billion in U.S. contributions to the international Covax program, administration officials said Thursday, directly engaging the nation in global efforts to deliver Covid-19 vaccines to the world’s most poor of the world.
Mr Biden will detail his plans during a virtual meeting Friday with G-7 leaders, where topics are expected to include the global response to the pandemic, efforts to revive the global economy, climate change and tensions with the China.
In a call with reporters Thursday, senior administration officials said Mr Biden would announce an initial investment of $ 2 billion and call on other countries to join the World Organization’s immunization effort. health and strengthen their commitments. The Biden administration said the initial contribution would come from funding allocated by Congress in December, which is expected to be disbursed by the end of the month.
The United States will begin releasing an additional $ 2 billion by 2021 and 2022, officials said, when other countries meet their existing donor commitments and initial doses of the vaccine are delivered to low-income countries and intermediate.
A White House official said the Biden administration’s commitment was “to ensure global access to equitable, safe and effective vaccines to help beat the pandemic.”
“This pandemic will only end if we end it globally,” the official added.
The Trump administration withdrew from the Covax project after former President Donald Trump took steps to remove the United States from the World Health Organization because of its ties to China. When he took office in January, Mr. Biden quickly reversed Mr. Trump’s decision. His administration also immediately expressed its intention to engage in the multilateral effort on global vaccinations.
Covax aims to provide free Covid-19 vaccines to at least 20% of the population of the world’s 92 poorest countries by the end of 2021. Just over 50 other countries, including Canada and income countries upper-middle-marketers like South Africa and Mexico, have also ordered vaccines through Covax but have to pay for the doses themselves.
Mr Biden will also call on the G-7 and other countries to spend billions more to expand global vaccinations against Covid-19 and to strengthen vaccine manufacture, supply and delivery, people said. responsible.
Covax says it has negotiated deals for around 2.27 billion doses of the vaccine this year. Most countries will receive a first shipment in March, with some small deliveries expected in late February.
Some countries have made bilateral donations of the vaccine to neighboring countries. Officials in the Biden administration have stopped saying whether the United States will donate surplus vaccines, stressing the need to vaccinate the American public first against the virus.
“Our current goal is to vaccinate Americans, to get gunfire here, and to support Covax’s efforts,” an official said.
The Biden administration has secured contracts with Pfizer and Moderna for more than 200 million additional doses of the vaccine, which the president says should allow most of the U.S. adult population to be vaccinated by the end of the year. ‘summer.
[ad_2]
Source link