The president of the United States, Joe Biden, said Tuesday that he hopes his government can begin to share with other countries its inventory of vaccines against covid-19 “before the end of the summer” (June 21 – September 21 in the northern hemisphere), once it has been ensured that the country has sufficient doses to inoculate its entire population.
“My hope is that, before the end of the summer, I will be talking with you that we already have access to more vaccines than we need to take care of each American and we are helping other countries, poor countries,” said the president during a act at the White House.
The White House has already reached agreements with Mexico and Canada to send them a total of 4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and the University of Oxford, whose emergency use has not yet been approved in the United States.
“Until this vaccine is available around the world and we are beating the virus in other nations, we will not be completely safe.” This is the main reason why Biden believes in the importance of bringing vaccines to nations that do not have access to them.
However, it has not yet responded publicly to requests from many other countries, more or less developed, that have asked it to have access to their surpluses, given that the United States has purchased many more doses than it needs to immunize all its adult population.
The US government believes that by the end of May it will have enough doses to vaccinate all adult Americans, but it has insisted that it must prepare for possible unforeseen events, such as manufacturing problems.
The accumulation of doses by the United States and other rich countries has raised concern among some experts, who warn that this may be having an impact on the inability of other countries with fewer resources to obtain sufficient vaccines in the short term, which may increase the risk of virus mutations.
In addition, the Biden administration wants to reserve doses in case they are necessary to boost the immunity of those who have already been vaccinated, or to supply them to children if it is proven that injectables are effective and safe for use in minors.
In total, the North American country has bought enough doses to inoculate 500 million people.
The United States has also donated $ 2 billion to the COVAX platform for the development and equitable distribution of vaccines, and plans to donate another $ 2 billion through 2022.
Although it is a quite viable hope for the poorest countries, until the plan to help the other nations is in effect executed, the Covid-19 will continue to gain ground and therefore no country has resources or will not be completely safe. .