September 23, (THEWILL) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday pledged to buy 500 million more COVID-19 vaccine doses to donate to other countries, which will put total U.S. donations to more than 1.1 billion doses as it comes under increasing pressure to share its supply with the rest of the world.
“This is an all hands on deck crisis,” Biden said, kicking off a virtual summit on the sidelines of the General Assembly aimed at boosting global vaccination rates.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in his speech to the U.N. on Tuesday, repeated China’s aim to provide 2 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to the world by the end of the year.
ONE Campaign, a nonprofit focused on poverty and public health, said the U.S. donation will not be enough and that other wealthy countries need to urgently increase support for global vaccination efforts or face leaving more than 2.3 billion around the world still unvaccinated by September next year.
“We are past the point of urgency to end this pandemic. Everyone is on the hook to agree to a global plan to get 70% of the world vaccinated,” Tom Hart, acting chief executive at ONE, said in a statement.
Peru’s new leftist president, Pedro Castillo, told the gathering he was proposing an international agreement between heads of state and the owners of COVID-19 vaccine patents “to guarantee universal access” to the shots.
“The battle against the pandemic has shown us the failure of the international community to cooperate under the principle of solidarity,” Castillo said.
Peru has suffered the world’s highest mortality rate caused by the virus and has so far fully vaccinated less than 30% of its population.
The new Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, told leaders the Islamic Republic is facing another hurdle in its bid to get its population vaccinated – U.S. sanctions.
“Sanctions, especially sanctions on medicine at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, are crimes against humanity,” Raisi said on Tuesday.
Food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are exempt from U.S. sanctions reimposed on Tehran in 2018 but the measures have deterred some foreign banks from processing financial transactions with Iran.
