The move comes because the US is grappling with its own shortages.
President Joe Biden plans to announce Friday that the United States will contribute $ 2 billion to a UN-backed program to distribute COVID-19 vaccine doses to people in the world’s poorest countries, senior Biden officials said -administration.
Congress had already allocated the money to the US Agency for International Development in December to supply Gavi, an international alliance for the distribution of vaccines. Congress foresaw a total of $ 4 billion, and officials said the US would give the rest to Gavi over the course of this year and 2022.
The move, which the White House said Biden plans to announce at a virtual meeting of the Group of Seven leaders, is as the United States grapples with not yet having enough doses to vaccinate its own population although the situation is much worse in poorer countries. .
To date, 10 countries have administered 75% of all COVID-19 vaccines, while more than 130 countries have not yet received a single dose, the United Nations said Wednesday.
Many countries are unable to compete with wealthier countries such as the US to purchase the limited amounts of vaccine doses available from manufacturers. In partnership with the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations foundation, Gavi is running a global vaccination initiative called COVAX that aims to address that inequality by distributing doses more fairly.
Although then-President Donald Trump signed a December bill allocating the $ 4 billion to Gavi, he had previously refused to support COVAX and his administration also cut ties with the World Health Organization.
Biden has drastically reversed that approach, keeping the US within the WHO and making the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic a national security priority worldwide.
But ending the global outbreak has proven complicated by the limited availability of vaccine doses.
The United States has so far purchased 600 million doses of vaccine, but it has no intention of giving them to other countries until – as Biden stated in a January 21 memorandum – “there is enough supply in the United States.”
A senior government official said Thursday that “this pledge to COVAX has no bearing at all on the vaccination program in the United States.”
“While we can’t share vaccine doses at this time, while we’re focusing on US vaccinations and getting weapons,” the official said, “we’re working hard to support COVAX, strengthen global vaccination around the world, and drive it. of the timeline for when we will have enough supplies in the United States and be able to donate excess vaccines. ”
China and Russia, meanwhile, have donated doses of their home-grown COVID-19 vaccines to partners and developing countries as a form of “vaccine diplomacy.” The United States has not yet followed suit.
The government officials argued that vaccinating people abroad protected the health of Americans domestically.
“Reducing the burden of disease reduces the risk for everyone in the world, including Americans,” the official said. “It also reduces the risk of variants, such as those we are seeing now. So it’s crucial to increase vaccination globally, while of course we prioritize vaccinations at home.”
The official said the first $ 2 billion tranche would be donated “within days to weeks” and “ideally by the end of this month”. Of the additional $ 2 billion, the US plans to contribute the first $ 500 million “pretty soon” to “boost some of those initial doses,” but it plans to do the rest at least initially. to encourage other countries to make their own pledges, the official said.
“This pandemic will not end unless we end it globally,” the official added.
ABC News’ Conor Finnegan contributed to the reporting.