President Joe Biden issues details of plan to export 80 million COVID vaccine doses

On Wednesday U.S Secretary of State Antony Blinken said ”President Joe Biden will announce within days the details of a plan to export 80 million coronavirus vaccine doses to other countries “without any political strings attached,”.

“In a few short days, in fact possibly as early as tomorrow, the president is going to announce in more detail the plan that he put together to push out 80 million vaccines around the world,” Blinken said at the US embassy in San Jose on his last day.

“We’re going to do that in coordination with Covax… based on science and needs… without any political strings attached,” the top US diplomat said, referring to the global vaccine-sharing program.

Around seven million doses will go to Latin America and the Caribbean, some seven million will go to South and Southeast Asia, and approximately five million will go to Africa, Biden has said in a statement. Those 19m doses will be shared through Covax, the global vaccine-sharing initiative.

The remainder, about six million doses, will be shared directly with countries seeing surges, and nations in crisis, as well as other allies and neighbors, including Canada, Mexico, India, and the Republic of Korea, Biden says in the statement.

The US has already shared more than four million doses with Mexico and Canada. Biden has said in May that he hopes to share 80m doses with other countries by the end of June.

“As the United States continues our efforts to get every eligible American vaccinated and fight COVID-19 here at home, we also recognize that ending this pandemic means ending it everywhere. As long as this pandemic is raging anywhere in the world, the American people will still be vulnerable. And the United States is committed to bringing the same urgency to international vaccination efforts that we have demonstrated at home,” his statement says.

“We are sharing these doses not to secure favors or extract concessions. 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.”