WASHINGTON (AP) – Joe Biden will use his first big presidential moment on the global stage at Friday’s Group of Seven meeting to announce that the US will soon begin to release $ 4 billion for an international effort to support purchasing and distribution coronavirus vaccine for poor nations, White House officials said.
Biden will also encourage G-7 partners to keep their promises to COVAX, an initiative by the World Health Organization to improve access to vaccines, according to a senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to see the announcement of Biden.
Former President Donald Trump refused to participate in the COVAX initiative because of his ties to WHO, the Geneva-based agency that Trump accused of covering up China’s mistakes in handling the virus at the start of the public health crisis. Trump took the United States out of WHO, but Biden acted quickly after his inauguration last month to return and confirmed that the United States would contribute to COVAX.
The $ 4 billion in US funding was approved by Congress in December and will be distributed through 2022.
The United States is committed to working through COVAX to ensure “equitable distribution of vaccines and global funding,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Thursday.
It remains to be seen how the G-7 allies will accept Biden’s calls for greater international cooperation in the distribution of vaccines, as the United States has refused to participate in the Trump initiative and there are growing calls for the Biden government to distribute some manufactured products. in the USA vaccines abroad.
French President Emmanuel Macron, in an interview Thursday with the Financial Times, asked the United States and European nations to allocate up to 5% of current vaccine supplies to developing countries – the kind of vaccine diplomacy that China and Russia started to deploy.
And earlier this week, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres sharply criticized the “wildly unequal and unjust” distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, noting that 10 countries administered 75% of all vaccines.
Last month, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also raised with Biden the prospect of Canada getting the vaccine from the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer ‘s facilities in Kalamazoo, Michigan, according to a senior Canadian government official who spoke to Associated. Press on condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.
Canada has received all of its doses from Pfizer from a company facility in Puurs, Belgium, and has experienced supply disruptions.
But Biden, who announced last week that the United States will have sufficient stockpile of the vaccine by the end of the summer to inoculate 300 million people, it remains focused on ensuring that all Americans are vaccinated, government officials say.
The president, in his first national security memo last month, asked his government to develop a framework for donating surplus vaccines as soon as there is sufficient supply in the United States.
The COVAX program has already lost its own goal of starting vaccination against coronavirus in poor countries, at the same time that vaccines were launched in rich countries. WHO says COVAX needs $ 5 billion in 2021.
Guterres said Wednesday that 130 countries had not received a single dose of the vaccine and said that “at this critical time, equality of the vaccine is the biggest moral test before the global community”.
The Group of Seven industrialized nations is the United States, Germany, Japan, Great Britain, France, Canada and Italy. Friday’s G-7 meeting, the first of Biden’s presidency, is being held virtually.
In addition to discussing the distribution of the vaccine, Biden also plans to use the meeting to discuss the collective competitiveness of the G-7 countries and the economic challenges imposed by China, according to the White House.
Biden is also expected to deliver a virtual speech at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, before traveling to Michigan to visit Pfizer’s vaccine factory.