Biden Says US Launching Vaccine Partnership With EU to Expand Global Vaccination

In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Joe Biden boasted that the United States had "reengaged [with] the World Health Organisation (WHO)," and said that Washington was now working "in close partnership with COVAX to deliver lifesaving vaccines around the world."

The US is launching a new vaccine partnership with the EU to expand existing global vaccination efforts, and plans to buy an additional 500 million Covid jab doses to donate to poor and middle income countries, President Joe Biden has announced.

Speaking at a virtual Covid vaccination summit on Wednesday, the president said that Washington had already shipped some 160 million vaccine doses to 100 countries, and specified that the new half-billion in additional jabs would be shipped in 2022, and be produced in the US by Pfizer and BioNTech.

The new programme is worth some $370 million, Biden said.

"To beat the pandemic here we need to beat it everywhere," Biden said, speaking to other leaders from countries including Canada, South Africa and the UK, as well as WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Speaking to Reuters ahead of the summit, an administration official said that the new deliveries would constitute "a huge commitment," since "for every one shot we have administered in this country to date, we are now donating three shots to other countries." A source previously indicated to the news agency that Washington would be paying $7 per dose for the new vaccines, equivalent to about $3.5 billion, not the $370 million mentioned by Biden in his remarks on Wednesday.

No Strings 'Dose of Hope'?

In his remarks before the UN General Assembly on Tuesday night, Biden said that the US had already spent over $15 billion on the "global COVID response."

"Planes carrying vaccines from the United States have already landed in 100 countries, bringing people all over the world a little 'dose of hope', as one American nurse termed it to me. A 'dose of hope', direct from the American people - and, importantly, no strings attached," the president said.

The US began donating vaccine doses to other countries under the COVAX programme earlier this year after initially hoarding them for domestic use after discovering that tens of millions of jabs would soon expire if not used. Additionally, 60 million of the 80 million doses shipped abroad as of mid-summer were made by AstraZeneca, whose use on Americans the Food and Drug Administration delayed due to concerns of possible severe health complications, including brain haemorrhaging.

Earlier this year, African nations reported the destruction of some 450,000 expired coronavirus vaccine doses sent as aid by Western countries. WHO said the destruction was the result of delays in shipment, and the decision by some nations to sit on the vaccines for possible use at home instead of shipping them immediately after they were produced.

The Biden administration began pushing a federal vaccine mandate policy at home this month, but has run into resistance from some governors, mayors, and industry leaders, as well as ordinary Americans expressing hesitation in getting the jab amid fears of possible side effects. US virologist and mRNA technology expert Dr. Robert Malone recently warned authorities against attempting mandatory vaccination campaigns, saying it's not possible to vaccinate countries, or the world, out of the pandemic. Some US media have accused Malone and others expressing doubts about the jab of spreading "vaccine misinformation."