By Jeff Mason and Carl O’Donnell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden on Thursday laid out how the United States would share some 25 million of a planned 80 million COVID-19 vaccine doses with the rest of the world.
The United States will donate nearly 19 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine supply through the COVAX international vaccine sharing program, he said in a statement.
Through COVAX, some 6 million doses would go to Latin America and the Caribbean, about 7 million doses to South and Southeast Asia and roughly 5 million for Africa.
The remaining doses, amounting to just over 6 million, would go directly from the United States to countries including Canada, Mexico, India and South Korea, he said.
“We are sharing these doses not to secure favors or extract concessions,” Biden said in a statement. “We are sharing these vaccines to save lives and to lead the world in bringing an end to the pandemic, with the power of our example and with our values.”
Biden has come under pressure from the world community to share the U.S. surplus of COVID-19 vaccines.
For months, the White House has remained focused on getting Americans vaccinated after the coronavirus killed more than half a million people in the United States within the last year.
But the president has promised that the United States would become a supplier to other countries and pledged to send abroad at least 20 million doses of the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE, Moderna Inc and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, on top of 60 million AstraZeneca Plc doses he had already planned to give to other countries.
The 25 million doses Biden announced on Thursday will not include supply from AstraZeneca, the White House said. Biden will make his goal of getting all 80 million doses distributed in June.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Carl O’Donnell; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Bill Berkrot)
