President Biden told global leaders Wednesday to “supercharge” the fight against COVID-19 by donating — not selling — vaccines to needy nations with no diplomatic strings attached and bolstering supplies of oxygen, medical treatments and masks where they’re needed.
Hosting a COVID-19 summit on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Mr. Biden said the U.S. will set an example by purchasing an additional 500 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to give to the rest of the world, bringing its tally of committed doses to 1.1 billion.
The White House and European Union agreed to coordinate their vaccine donations and the U.S. will provide more than $380 million to the vaccine-sharing alliance known as Gavi to bolster the administration of shots.
Mr. Biden called on nongovernmental organizations to do their part, saying governments cannot do everything.
“Nothing is more urgent than all of us working together to defeat COVID-19,” Mr. Biden told leaders in a virtual meeting he convened from the White House. “This is a global tragedy. We’re not going to solve this crisis with half-measures or middle-of-the-road ambitions. We need to go big and we need to do our part.
“The only way to get this done is for everyone, all of us, to step up, which I’m confident we will,” he said.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield attended in person while U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were among the world leaders who joined online.
Leaders from Indonesia, South Africa and the European Commission also joined virtually, as did Gavi CEO Seth Berkley and World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
Mr. Biden said the leaders should reconvene for a second summit at the beginning of 2022 to gauge their progress and align efforts.
The administration and the World Health Organization say the coronavirus will be a danger so long as swaths of the global population remain unvaccinated.
The virus has shown an ability to mutate into more dangerous forms and skip from one corner of the world to another, even as WHO says wealthy nations are falling short of sharing the doses needed to wrangle the virus.
Former Washington Gov. Gary Locke, who also served as U.S. ambassador to China and U.S. Commerce Secretary under President Barack Obama, said Mr. Biden’s message wasn’t just for China, which is wielding vaccines in a form of “vaccine diplomacy,” or western allies who could donate more doses.
“It’s the entire world, frankly,” he told The Washington Times. “It’s in the public health and economic interests of all of the advanced countries to get the entire world vaccinated as much as possible and as quickly as possible.”
The pandemic has resulted in 230 million known cases and 4.7 million deaths around the world. The U.S. has recorded the most deaths (678,000), followed by Brazil (591,000) and India (445,000), though many Americans question whether other nations are diligent in their record-keeping.
Mr. Biden positioned himself as a global leader in the fight even as he struggles to keep patients out of hospitals and lift vaccination rates at home.
Roughly 55% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated and about a quarter of eligible Americans have not received any doses, prompting Mr. Biden to push employer-based mandates and other measures to force people into getting the shots.
Mr. Biden earlier this year pledged to provide roughly 100 million doses of multiple vaccines to other countries, including the British-Swiss AstraZeneca vaccine that hasn’t been approved in the U.S. but is widely used in other countries.
He followed that up by purchasing 500 million doses from Pfizer ahead of the Group of Seven industrial nations summit over the summer. Wednesday’s announcement will double that purchase, bringing the total U.S. donation to around 1.1 billion.
Pfizer’s vaccine is administered in two doses, so 1 billion doses would be enough to fully vaccinate 500 million people. The administration did not disclose a total cost for the vaccines but said Pfizer is providing them at a “not-for-profit” price.
The administration said the Pfizer doses will be made in the U.S. and shipped out from January to September of next year. It said tens of millions of other doses have been donated this year.
“We need other high-income countries to deliver on their own ambitious vaccine donations and pledges,” Mr. Biden said.
But some caution that pledges made at video summits won’t cut it as developing nations struggle to find doses.
“The summit plan is for a long afternoon of videos, many of them recorded in advance. The hosts are unlikely to be significantly challenged by developing country governments and people at risk of losing their families. This means, as important as the summit is to corral further commitments, it will not produce the transformative response needed to end the pandemic,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program.
Mr. Biden previously endorsed a plan to waive U.S. patents on the vaccines to share know-how with developing countries.
But Europe and the private sector pushed back, saying it would infringe on intellectual property and many nations don’t have the capability to produce vaccines on their own, anyway.
After the summit, the White House released a U.S.-European Union agenda focused on donations.
It said the EU is committed to donating 500 million doses and will center its sharing through COVAX, a major vaccine-sharing program that helps low- and middle-income countries.
Oxfam America, a nonprofit focused on fighting poverty, said the suggested donations won’t meet the world’s needs.
“Charity won’t win the war against the coronavirus. While every additional life-saving vaccine dose is welcome, the 500 million additional doses President Biden just committed are still a drop in the bucket compared to the urgent need across the world,” said Oxfam America’s President and CEO Abby Maxman. “President Biden and leaders of rich countries should listen to what leaders from developing countries are asking for: the rights and the recipe to make their own vaccine doses.”
Mr. Locke said waiving intellectual property rights is a “false promise” because there isn’t time to set up new processes and facilities.
“The world cannot wait two or three years to build new manufacturing, we don’t have the luxury,” he said.
Instead, he’d like to see places like India leverage existing licensing agreements at their plants, such as the massive Serum Institute, to get doses to needy places.
“We really need to be expanding existing facilities and hiring more workers,” he said. “We need to be running them 24/7.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.