(CNN) — The United States will share tens of millions of COVID-19 vaccines this summer with countries around the world, in addition to the 80 million it has already allocated, White House COVID-19 response director Jeff Zients said Thursday. .
“Just as our work to vaccinate Americans does not stop on July 4, our work to help vaccinate the world does not stop at these 80 million doses,” Zients told reporters at a covid-19 briefing on the White House. “We will continue to share tens of millions more American doses during the summer months as we help lead the fight to end the pandemic around the world.”
The move is part of President Joe Biden’s effort to reaffirm America’s leadership on the world stage and help countries around the world battling covid-19 outbreaks combat the pandemic. It will also serve to counter efforts by Russia and China to use their own state-funded vaccines to expand their global influence.
The US has assigned 80 million vaccines against COVID-19 to countries around the world, as the president had promised to do at the end of June. The White House said that at least 75% of these donated vaccines would be shared with the global vaccination program called Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access, or Covax, and 25% would be shared directly with countries in need.
But not all doses have been shipped. By the end of this week, the United States will have shipped about 40 million doses to the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Taiwan, Colombia, Pakistan, Peru, Ecuador, Malaysia, Bangladesh and other countries, Zients said. The rest of the 80 million doses will be shipped in the coming weeks, he said. The vaccines shipped are the three that have been licensed for use in the United States: Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson.
In addition to those 80 million doses, the president pledged last month to donate 500 million doses of Pfizer globally.
“This is by far the largest donation of covid-19 vaccines ever made by a single country,” Zients said Thursday.
Earlier this year, the president said that $ 2 billion in U.S. contributions would go toward a global coronavirus vaccine initiative and provide support for Covax. It also pledged an additional $ 2 billion in funding depending on contributions from other nations and meeting dose management targets.
Thursday’s announcement comes as federal officials express concern over the spread of the variants in the US and the administration accelerates to vaccinate the rest of the American population.
The White House also announced Thursday that it would deploy response teams to the U.S. in areas with a high spread of the highly contagious delta variant of covid-19 as concerns grow across the country. The White House coronavirus team is spearheading the effort, and officials hope response teams will help push testing, providing supplies and potentially increasing paid media efforts targeting regions where vaccines are low.
The White House recently recognized that the US would fall short of Biden’s goals of having 70% of adult Americans with at least one shot of the covid-19 vaccine and 160 million fully vaccinated by July 4. Zients said the country has more work to do to vaccinate younger Americans and that he expects the United States to reach those goals weeks after the initial date.
More than 154 million Americans had been fully vaccinated as of Thursday morning, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than 57% of Americans age 18 and older are fully vaccinated.
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