At the virtual G7 Summit on Friday, February 19th, President Biden announced that the United States is pledging $4 billion to the global COVAX initiative. This COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access program aims to distribute COVID-19 vaccines in low-income countries. Under the Trump administration, the United States was not going to participate in COVAX. Therefore, this decision marks the Biden administration’s new global focus on combatting the virus. The ultimate goal of COVAX is to deliver at least 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines to countries in need by the end of 2021; the United States is now officially backing the effort.
COVAX is part of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, a program started in April 2020 to help combat the pandemic on a global scale. Within COVAX, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) leads vaccine development and manufacturing functions. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, spearheads vaccine procurement and delivery functions while the World Health Organization (WHO) heads allocation policy.
Global vaccine rollout through COVAX began this week, as 600,000 doses of the vaccine were shipped from Mumbai, India to Accra, Ghana on February 24th. Ghana is the first country to receive vaccines from the international COVAX facility. While this is a historic first step in vaccine equity, leaders from the programs within COVAX continue to urge more governments and businesses to support the effort to increase the global share of vaccines.
COVAX will not affect the program in place for the vaccination of United States residents. The Biden administration plans to look into donating any extra vaccines from the domestic program to COVAX if the United States has vaccines leftover in the future. For the time being, the domestic program is the United States’ priority while it contributes to COVAX Consequently, decisions regarding sharing resources with the COVAX program will come when everyone in the United States is vaccinated.
The Biden administration has reversed the role of the United States in health diplomacy with its decision to contribute to COVAX. The “America first” mentality of the Trump administration was dangerous in many ways, but especially when it came to fighting a global health crisis. Though the pandemic continues to devastate communities across the world, it is encouraging to see the United States participating in the effort to end the pandemic on a global scale. In a recent statement from the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, stated that “we will not end the pandemic anywhere unless we end it everywhere.” His words capture the importance of COVAX’s central mission and the necessity of supporting global vaccine distribution to combat COVID-19.