Biden Will Announce Plan Next Month to Help Rest of World With COVID-19 Pandemic

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US President Joe Biden said during remarks about his new COVID-19 response plan that he will also be announcing additional steps next month to help the international community as well.

"I’ll be announcing additional steps to help the rest of the world later this month," Biden said on Thursday.

The US president said the United States will be donating another 500 million Pfizer vaccine doses to lower-income countries in need of them.

Biden reiterated that the United States has already donated more vaccines to other states than all other countries combined.

Biden's new COVID-19 strategy includes mandating vaccines for federal government employees and contractors and calls on state governors to mandate vaccines for teachers as well as expand testing accessibility.

"It is essential that federal employees take all available steps to protect themselves and avoid spreading COVID-19 to their co-workers and members of the public. The CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] has found that the best way to do so is to be vaccinated," Biden said.

It also includes a new rule from the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) that requires all companies with 100 or more workers to demand the workers to either get vaccinated or be subjected to weekly testing.

This comes as various polls show Biden's ratings have dropped in several battleground states, following a bumpy summer in the United States. These include a rough hurricane season, wildfires, and the continued surge of COVID-19 cases around the country.

A spike in cases caused by the emergent Delta variant of the virus has caused US lawmakers to begin reconsidering new public health policies as it relates to vaccines, masks, and social distancing.

Meanwhile, a new COVID-19 strain, called Mu, initially discovered in Colombia, poses no immediate threat to the United States, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci has assured.