Biden, Moon announce joint plan to boost global Covid vaccine supply
Washington, May 21 (EFE).- United States president Joe Biden and his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-In announced a joint Covid-19 vaccine initiative on Friday to boost supplies around the world.
“We agreed to establish a comprehensive vaccine partnership to expand the manufacture of vaccines that have been approved safe and effective and so we can scale up global vaccine supplies,” Biden announced in a joint press conference with Moon at the White House after their bilateral summit.
“We will strengthen our ability to fight the pandemic and respond to future biological threats.”
The two nations will aim to “contribute to accelerating a complete ending of Covid-19,” Moon said.
“The US has the ability to develop vaccines and Korea has the capacity to produce biomedicine, and we are going to combine those capabilities so we can boost vaccine supply so that we can accelerate the rollout of vaccines to the entire world – especially in the Indo-Pacific region,” Moon said, adding that in the process, South Korea will receive help to stabilize the supply of vaccines.
Biden thanked his counterpart for taking action not just for his own country but for others.
“This is what I like about this president – he’s not just talking about any more than I’m just talking about the United States or just Korea, he’s talking about the Indo-Pacific. He’s talking about the world,” Biden said.
“We, with advanced capabilities, have an obligation to do everything we can to provide for protection of the entire world.”
Biden also announced that the US will provide vaccines to 550,000 South Korean armed forces personnel working closely with US forces on the Korean Peninsula.
He also said that the US already has enough vaccines to immunize all Americans who want it and that by mid-summer all those who want will already be vaccinated, while he has ambitions to make another billion doses in the coming months.
“We believe that between the second half of 2021 and going in through 2022 we could produce as many as another billion doses of vaccine,” Biden said. EFE
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