US will give $2 billion to fund Covid vaccines for poorer countries, White House officials say

President due to announce a large contribution to a WHO-backed Covid vaccine financing effort during his speech on Friday at the G7 summit

President Joe Biden tours the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, on February 11, 2021. (AFP via Getty Images)

Three hundred and forty-four days after the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 to be a pandemic, the United States is joining the international effort to combat the virus by helping finance vaccine distribution in some of the world’s poorest countries.

According to White House officials, President Joe Biden will use his Friday address to a virtual G7 summit to announce a $2 billion US contribution to Gavi, the international alliance behind the WHO-backed Covid vaccine financing effort for middle and lower-income countries known as the Covax Advance Market Commitment.

“We do think that it is vital to take a role in dealing with the pandemic globally and to really put US leadership out there to do this,” an administration official said during a briefing with reporters on Thursday. “Decreasing the burden of disease decreases the risk to everyone in the world, including Americans. It also decreases the risk of variants occurring like those that we’re seeing now, so it’s critically important to search vaccination globally, while of course prioritizing vaccinations here at home.”

Drawn from funds appropriated by Congress in December 2020, the $2 billion is just the initial downpayment on what will be a $4 billion US contribution to the Covax effort. That effort will spread over the next two fiscal years, with administration officials predicting that an additional payment representing a quarter of the remaining $2 billion will be made “quickly” to purchase vaccine doses. 

Another White House official said the US wants to use the remaining funds as part of a “call to action among other G7 partners and partners around the world to expand Covax and… vaccinate more people, but also to expand the prerequisite manufacturing supply and vaccination delivery services that are necessary to make sure that vaccinations can actually happen”.

Biden’s pledge to join the Covid vaccination push is the latest in a series of actions to reverse Covid-related policies of his predecessor. Former President Donald Trump frequently showed disdain for traditional US allies and multilateral organizations under the guise of promoting what he called an “America First” foreign policy. 

It was under Trump’s administration that the United States had previously declined to participate in the WHO-backed Covax effort, citing the then-president’s belief that the WHO’s response to the Covid pandemic had been “China-centric”. The former president was also a frequent purveyor of false claims and conspiracy theories regarding the origins of the novel coronavirus, which he often referred to with racist epithets such as “kung flu” and “the China virus”.

By contrast, Biden has made American reengagement with the global community — and the global health community in particular — a hallmark of his young administration. He signed documents to reverse Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO just moments after being sworn in on January 20, and just a day later made US leadership of the global pandemic response the subject of his first national security directive.

But even as he has taken pains to signal his commitment to America’s allies and multilateral organizations, he has also made a point of noting that neither domestic nor foreign policy can exist in a vacuum, and used the occasion of his first major foreign policy address as president to acknowledge the domestic impact that foreign policy decisions can have.

“There’s no longer a bright line between foreign and domestic policy,” Biden said earlier this month while speaking at US State Department headquarters. “Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind.”

To that end, even as the Biden administration engages with the global anti-Covid fight, officials are taking care to stress that America’s contributions to the international vaccine deployment project will not impact ongoing efforts to vaccinate the 330 million-strong US population. 

A White House official explained that while the president’s January 21 directive includes instructions for the Secretaries of State and Health and Human Services to develop a framework for donating excess vaccine supplies to countries in need, no such donations would take place until an adequate domestic supply is procured. 

“While we’re not able to share vaccine doses at this time while we’re focused on American vaccinations and getting shots in the arms, we’re working hard to support Covax, strengthen global vaccination around the world, and determin[e] the timeline for when we will have a sufficient supply in the United States and be able to donate surplus vaccines,” they said. 

But in the end, the official said it is necessary to participate in the effort to stop the global spread of the virus because defeating it at home will be too little effect if it continues to spread and mutate elsewhere.

“This pandemic is not going to end unless we end it globally. Certainly we have to prioritize what’s happening here at home — that needs to be our highest priority — but pandemics, they travel… and we also know that the more disease that’s out there, the more likely we are to see additional mutations and variants,” they said. “In addition to saving a lot of lives… it’s also the right thing to do from an international security and economic perspective.”