US to buy 500 mn doses of Pfizer vaccine to donate to other countries

Washington, Sep 22 (EFE).- President Joe Biden will announce Wednesday that the US government is negotiating to buy 500 million additional doses of Pfizer’s anti-Covid vaccine to donate to “low and medium income” nations, two top administration officials said.

The president will make the announcement during a virtual global summit on the pandemic he will head on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly session, the spokespeople added in a conference call with reporters.

Up to now, the US has committed itself to donating more than 600 million doses, including 500 million Pfizer doses destined for 100 low income countries, they said.

The new purchase will bring to more than 1.1 billion the number of vaccine doses that the US will send “free of charge” and “without preconditions” to nations around the world, the spokespeople said.

For every injection that the US has administered domestically up to now, the administration will donate three injections to other countries, one of the spokespeople said, emphasizing that “no other country” or group of countries in the world has even approached that level of contribution to dealing with the Covid pandemic.

The new doses will begin being distributed in January 2022, the spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, the officials added that Biden will host a summit on the pandemic to run parallel with the General Assembly sessions that began at the New York headquarters of the international body on Tuesday.

The US hopes that attending the pandemic summit will be heads of state, leaders of international organizations, private sector representatives, philanthropists and representatives of non-governmental organizations and other partners.

The officials emphasized that the gathering has an “ambitious objective” of getting the attending countries, including low and medium income nations, to establish the goal of fully vaccinating 70 percent of their populations against Covid before next year’s General Assembly session.

The meeting on the pandemic will be divided into four sessions, the first of which will be chaired by Biden and in which UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres and World Health Organization Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will participate.

EFE