WASHINGTON (AP) – Joe Biden will use his first major presidential moment on the world stage at the Group of Seven meeting of world leaders on Friday to announce that the US will soon release $ 4 billion for an international effort to increase the purchase and distribution of coronavirus-backed vaccine for poor countries, White House officials said.
Biden will also encourage G-7 partners to keep their promises to COVAX, a World Health Organization initiative to improve access to vaccines, said a senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to anticipate the announcement of Biden.
Former President Donald Trump declined to participate in the COVAX initiative because of his ties to the WHO, the Geneva-based agency that accused Trump of covering up China’s missteps in dealing with the virus at the start of the public health crisis. Trump has taken the US out of the WHO, but Biden quickly went after his inauguration last month to regain consciousness and confirmed that the US would contribute to COVAX.
The $ 4 billion in US funding was approved by Congress in December and will be distributed in 2022.
The US is determined to work through COVAX to ensure “fair distribution of vaccines and funding worldwide,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Thursday.
It remains to be seen how G-7 allies will follow up on Biden’s calls for more international cooperation in vaccine distribution as the US refused to participate in the initiative under Trump and there are growing calls for Biden’s administration to call for a Number of vaccine produced in the US supplies overseas.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday in an interview with the Financial Times called on the US and European countries to allocate up to 5% of current vaccine supplies to developing countries – the kind of vaccine diplomacy that China and Russia have begun to deploy.
And earlier this week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sharply criticized the “hugely uneven and unfair” distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, noting that 10 countries administered 75% of all vaccinations.
Last month, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also raised with Biden the prospect of Canada getting the vaccine from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, according to a senior Canadian government official, who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. to have a private conversation.
Canada receives all of its Pfizer doses from a company facility in Puurs, Belgium, and has experienced disruptions in supply.
But Biden, who announced last week that the US will have adequate supplies of the vaccine By the end of the summer to inoculate 300 million people, remains focused for now on making sure every American gets vaccinated, officials say.
The president, in his first national security memorandum last month, called on his government to develop a framework to donate surplus vaccines as soon as there is sufficient supply in the US.
The COVAX program has already missed its own goal of starting coronavirus vaccinations in poor countries at the same time that shots were being rolled out in rich countries. WHO says COVAX needs $ 5 billion by 2021.
Guterres said on Wednesday that 130 countries have not received a single dose of the vaccine, stating that “at this critical time, vaccine equality is the greatest moral test for the world community.”
The group of seven industrialized countries are the United States, Germany, Japan, Great Britain, France, Canada and Italy. Friday, the meeting of the G-7, the first of Biden’s presidency, will take place virtually.
In addition to discussing vaccine distribution, Biden also plans to use the meeting to discuss the collective competitiveness of the G-7 countries and China’s economic challenges, the White House said.
Biden is also scheduled to deliver a virtual address to the Munich security conference on Friday before traveling to Michigan to visit Pfizer’s vaccine factory.