Under pressure, U.S. donates half billion more COVID-19 vaccine doses to world

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - The United States yesterday promised to buy 500 million more COVID-19 vaccine doses to donate to other countries as it comes under increasing pressure to share its supply with the rest of the world.

President Joe Biden made the announcement during a virtual summit aimed at boosting global vaccination rates against the coronavirus and rallying world leaders to do more.

"To beat the pandemic here we need to beat it everywhere," Biden said as he kicked off the summit, which included leaders from Britain, Canada, Indonesia and South Africa as well as World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

"This is an all hands on deck crisis," Biden said of the pandemic that has raged since early 2020, killing more than 4,900,000 people. https://graphics.reuters.com/worldcoronavirus-tracker-and-maps

The additional vaccines will bring U.S. donations to more than 1.1 billion doses, far short of the 5 billion to 6 billion doses global health experts say is needed by poorer countries. Delivery of the new tranche will begin in January.

Health experts say rich countries have not done enough and have criticized the United States in particular for planning booster shots for fully vaccinated Americans while much of the world's population still does not have access to vaccines.

They say the planned U.S. dose donations are welcome but insufficient and note the Pfizer vaccine is difficult to scale up and to administer in poorer countries, which lack sophisticated infrastructure for storing and shipping shots.

“We will need 6 to 9 billion doses of vaccines” to inoculate the developing world, said Peter Hotez, dean of the National Tropical School of Medicine at Baylor University in Texas.

"Donations alone aren’t enough to end this pandemic. The vast majority of lofty donation pledges haven’t materialized so far," said Carrie Teicher, director of programs for Doctors Without Borders.

Leaders from developing nations have warned that vaccine hoarding by wealthy countries could lead to new coronavirus variants.

Biden said the United States would provide $370 million "to support administering these shots" and more than $380 million to help the Global Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) handle vaccine distribution in regions with the greatest need.