The White House announced Wednesday that U.S. President Joe Biden plans to purchase and donate 500 million doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine to over 90 countries.
Biden urged the world’s democracies to do their part to help end the deadly pandemic.
The White House noted that the goal of the donation is to save lives and end the pandemic and will provide the foundation for additional actions to be announced in the coming days.
U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech stated that they will provide 200 million doses in 2021 and 300 million doses in the first half of 2022, which the United States plans to distribute to 92 lower-income countries and the African Union.
The vaccines will be produced at Pfizer's U.S. production sites and provided at a not-for-profit price.
The announcement of the vaccine donation, the largest ever by a single country, comes ahead of the U.S president's meeting with leaders of the other Group of Seven advanced economies in Cornwall, England.
The group also includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan.
A source familiar with the matter noted that the donation was negotiated over the past four weeks by White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients and the coronavirus task force team.
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