The Biden administration, under intense pressure to donate excess coronavirus vaccines to needy nations, is moving to address the global shortage in another way: by partnering with Japan, India and Australia to finance a dramatic expansion of the vaccine manufacturing capacity.
The agreement was announced Friday at the Quad Summit, a virtual meeting between the heads of state of those four countries, which President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris attended Friday morning. The goal, senior administration officials said, is to address an acute vaccine shortage in Southeast Asia, which in turn will boost worldwide supply
The United States has fallen far behind China, Russia and India in the race to marshal coronavirus vaccines as an instrument of diplomacy. At the same time, Mr. Biden is facing accusations of “vaccine hoarding” from global health advocates who want his administration to channel supplies to needy nations that are desperate for access.
Insisting that Americans come first, the president has so far refused to make any concrete commitments to give away American-made vaccines.
“If we have a surplus, we’re going to share it with the rest of the world,” he said earlier this week, adding, “We’re going to start off making sure Americans are taken care of first, but we’re then going to try and help the rest of the world.”
The One Campaign, a nonprofit founded by the U2 singer Bono, says the U.S. has purchased 453 million excess vaccine doses that could be sent to foreign nations. It has called on the Biden administration to share 5 percent of doses abroad once 20 percent of Americans have been vaccinated, and to gradually increase the percentage of shared doses as more Americans are vaccinated.
“It’s time for U.S. leaders to ask themselves: When this pandemic is over, do we want the world to remember America’s leadership to help distribute lifesaving vaccines, or will we leave that to others?” Tom Hart, The One Campaign’s North America executive director, said in a statement.
China and India are already giving away vaccine shots to curry favor with neighbors, and more than 50 countries from Latin America to Asia have ordered 1.2 billion doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. But Mr. Biden would face a political uproar if he sent doses abroad while they are still scarce in the United States.
Mr. Biden is taking steps to ramp up vaccine production so that there will be as many as a billion doses available by the end of this year — far more than are necessary to vaccinate the roughly 260 million American adults.
A deal the…
Read More: Covid-19 Global News: Live Updates on Johnson & Johnson Vaccine, Variants