In keeping with Joe Biden’s announcement yesterday at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, The United States pledged to purchase 500 million supplemental doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine to distribute them in countries with fewer resources.
The announcement of this initiative will be formally made tomorrow by the Democratic president, during a virtual summit that he will preside over the fight against the pandemic.
Sources cited by international agencies indicated that Biden intends to establish an “ambitious goal”: for each country to “achieve 70 percent vaccinations” in its population within a year. “It is an immense commitment from the United States. For every dose we have administered in this country so far, we are donating three doses to other countries,” said an official.
Reportedly the vaccines will be purchased at cost price and distributed through the international mechanism Covax.
In this way, the total number of doses that Washington promises to donate will rise to more than 1.1 billion. To date, the United States has donated some 160 million doses to more than 100 countries..
“The end of the pandemic”
In his speech yesterday at the UN, Joe Biden anticipated that he would make an announcement to combat the pandemic globally. “We are going to lead together with allies and partners and in cooperation with all who believe, as we do, that we can face these challenges and build a future that elevates all of our people and preserves this planet,” he said.
According to the OurWorldInData site, 43.5 percent of the world’s population received at least one dose of vaccine. But that figure, elevated by the rate of vaccination in developed countries, hides immense inequalities and there are countries with fewer resources where only 2 percent of the population was vaccinated.
Because, tomorrow’s summit “has the ambition to decree the beginning of the end of the pandemic” and “that is going to require a lot of work”, defined the American sources.
The coronavirus pandemic left more than 4.7 million deaths worldwide since the end of December 2019, according to a count on the base of official figures. However, the WHO estimates that the balance of the pandemic may be two or three times higher.
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