(CNN) — The Biden government announced on Wednesday a new agreement that it negotiated with Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and the global vaccination program called Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access, or Covax, to provide J & J’s covid-19 vaccine to people in conflict zones and other humanitarian settings where government vaccination campaigns cannot reach.
“We are looking forward to people in these difficult circumstances obtaining protection against covid-19 as soon as possible,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at an event on the virus.
Prior to this agreement, J&J vaccine doses could only be used in official vaccination programs run by other governments.
Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is highly valued in these areas for its single-dose style of vaccination and its flexibility in storage and transportation.
Blinken also announced “a new public-private partnership called Global Covid Corps”, in which private sector companies “will work pro-bono to share their experience and capabilities to support vaccination campaigns, taking on issues such as chain management. supply, and helping to optimize vaccination sites to deliver vaccines as quickly and safely as possible. “
Blinken said that the International Monetary Fund, the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the ACT Accelerator “have created a comprehensive covid data tracker”, to trace information on vaccination rates, income in the ICU, the doses promised and the doses delivered.
The head of US diplomacy said the tracker, which will be launched on Wednesday, will provide transparency and accountability.
“We are caught in a cycle of spending a lot of money when a crisis occurs, and then letting that funding run out once the crisis is over, which means that we either fail to prevent the next one from occurring or that we have to play games. catch up, “he said, and asked his diplomatic colleagues to” help build and maintain the political will to break that cycle. “
“We know the urgency of this fight. We know what we have to do to stop the pandemic. Now, we have to do it,” Blinken said.
The ministerial ceremony was attended by the Chinese ambassador to the United States, as well as representatives from Germany, Italy, South Korea, India, South Africa, Peru, Norway, Indonesia, the WHO and the UN, among others.
Blinken’s announcement on Wednesday comes as Biden aims to reassert US leadership on the world stage and help countries battling covid-19 outbreaks combat the pandemic. The vaccine donations will also serve to counter efforts by Russia and China to use their own state-funded vaccines to expand their global influence.
Biden has said he wants the United States to be a “vaccine arsenal” in the fight against COVID-19. It has repeatedly insisted that acceptance of US-bought vaccines carries no strings attached.
Biden announced last month that the U.S. was purchasing another 500 million covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer to donate to low- and lower-middle income countries around the world, bringing the total number of vaccines it The US has pledged to donate more than 1,000 million.
These vaccines will be distributed through Covax, which is an initiative led by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, in conjunction with the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Innovations in Epidemic Preparedness.
Worldwide vaccine distribution has been a complex undertaking for the Biden administration. White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan have worked with multiple federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and the Department of State, to coordinate the process and maintain that doses are delivered unconditionally.
The president has also called on other world leaders to increase their donations of vaccines to the countries that need them most to help end the pandemic.
Biden has also said that $ 2 billion of U.S. contributions would go towards a global coronavirus vaccine initiative and support Covax. He also pledged another $ 2 billion in funding, depending on contributions from other countries and on meeting dose delivery targets.
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