Biden commits to donating an additional 500 million vaccine doses
During a virtual summit Wednesday on COVID-19, President Biden announced a commitment to buying an additional 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, doubling the administration’s previous purchase, to donate to countries in need.
Video Transcript
JOE BIDEN: But we also know that to beat the pandemic here, we need to beat it everywhere and I made and I'm keeping the promise that America will become the arsenal of vaccines as we were the arsenal for democracy during World War II. We've already shipped nearly 160 million doses to 100 countries, more than every other country has donated combined. America's donations of about half a billion Pfizer vaccines through COVAX that I've announced before the G7 summit in June have already begun to ship.
Today, I'm announcing another historic commitment. The United States is buying another 1/2 billion doses of Pfizer to donate to low and middle income countries around the world. This is another 1/2 billion doses that will all be shipped by this time next year. And it brings our total commitment to a donation-- of donated vaccines to over 1.1 billion vaccines to be donated. Put in another way, for every one shot we've administered to date in America, we have now committed to do three shots to the rest of the world.
