US to donate 500 million more Covid vaccines to other countries

New York: United States has promised to buy 500 million more COVID-19 vaccine doses to donate to other countries. President Joe Biden wants to show it is leading by example. Kicking off the summit on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, President Joe Biden said that to beat the pandemic in the United States, they need to beat it everywhere. Leaders from Canada, Indonesia, South Africa and Britain, as well as World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attended the summit.

The additional vaccines will bring U.S. donations to the rest of the world to more than 1.1 billion doses, far short of the 5 billion to 6 billion doses global health experts say is needed by poorer countries.

The vaccines from



Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE will be made in the United States and shipped to low and lower middle-income countries starting in January.

In June, the Biden administration agreed to buy and donate 500 million doses of the vaccine.

The COVAX facility, backed by the World Health Organization and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), has delivered over 286 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to 141 countries, GAVI data shows.

Deliveries of the initial 500 million doses began in August, and the total one billion doses are expected to be delivered by the end of September 2022, according to a statement from Pfizer and BioNtech.