The federal government plans to ship 20 million doses of domestically-authorized COVID-19 vaccines abroad by the end of June, President Joe Biden announced Monday.
News of the administration’s plan was first reported by Bloomberg.
Biden said the decision comes as the United States has already “secured enough supply to vaccinate all adults and children above the age of 12.” The president hopes that by the end of June, enough Americans will be vaccinated that the U.S. will be able to part with the remaining “extra supply” of vaccines.
It’s the first time that the United States will disseminate some of its domestically-approved supply to foreign nations. In late April, the White House announced it would send out the entirety of its 60 million-plus doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is widely in use around the world but has not yet been authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
In all, the United States plans to ship 80 million vaccine doses around the world by mid-summer.
“Today, I’m announcing we’ll also share U.S.- authorized vaccine doses of Pfizer and Moderna and Johnson & Johnson as they become available with the rest of the world as well,” Biden said Monday. “These are vaccinations and vaccines that are authorized to be put in the arms of Americans.”
The president said the upcoming shipments are needed to slow the spread of potentially dangerous COVID-19 variants, many of which are already present within the United States. Even as Americans continue to get vaccinated, Biden said, the only way to prevent more mutations is by ensuring people across all borders have equal access to a life-saving jab.
“America will never be fully safe until the pandemic is globally under control,” Biden said, later adding: “New variants could arise overseas that could put us at greater risk. And we need to help the fight around the world to keep us safe here at home, and to do the right thing of helping other people. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the smart thing to do.”
Biden is also tapping COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients to lead the administration’s efforts to share doses with the world. The Biden administration has yet to announce how they will be shared or which countries will receive them.
“Our nation’s going to be the arsenal of vaccines for the rest of the world,” Biden said. He added that, compared to other countries like Russia and China that have sought to leverage their domestically produced doses, “we will not use our vaccines to secure favors from other countries.”
To date, the U.S. has shared about 4.5 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine with Canada and Mexico. Additional doses of the Pfizer vaccine manufactured in the U.S. have begun to be exported as the company has met its initial contract commitments to the federal government.
The U.S. has faced growing pressure to share more of its vaccine stockpile with the world as interest in vaccines has waned domestically.
More than 157 million Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 123 million are fully vaccinated against the virus. Biden hopes the U.S. will have 160 million people fully vaccinated by July Fourth.
Globally, more than 3.3 million people are confirmed to have died from the coronavirus, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. has seen the largest confirmed loss of life from COVID-19, at more than 586,000 people.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
