The US is shipping 3 million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to Indonesia, with another 1.5 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine heading to Nepal and 500,000 Moderna doses to Bhutan, a White House official said on Friday.
The shipments are part of a pledge by US President Joe Biden’s administration to share an initial batch of 80 million US-made vaccines globally amid concern about the wide disparity in vaccination rates between advanced and developing countries.
Last week, the administration announced plans to ship 1 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech to Malaysia.
Photo: Reuters / Antara Foto / Adiwinata Solihin
The shipment to Indonesia is part of 4 million doses promised last week and is one of the largest US shipments of donated vaccines thus far.
The remaining 1 million doses would be shipped soon, the official said, adding that the US was also moving forward with plans to boost assistance to Indonesia’s broader COVID-19 response.
Indonesia has recorded 2.4 million COVID-19 cases and 64,000 deaths, among the highest tolls in Asia. Those have accelerated at an alarming rate, with daily fatalities doubling in the first week of this month.
The US has been competing with China to deepen its geopolitical influence through so-called “vaccine diplomacy,” but insists it is not sharing vaccines to secure favors or extract concessions, but to save lives and end the pandemic.
The US has also announced plans to provide vaccines to other countries in Asia, including Cambodia, Laos, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
In addition to the 80 million doses, Washington has said it would purchase 500 million Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines to distribute to the African Union and 92 low and lower middle-income countries.
A White House official said scientific teams and legal and regulatory authorities had worked together to ensure the prompt delivery of safe and effective vaccine lots to Bhutan and Nepal.
IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva on Wednesday urged the US, China and other G20 members, whose finance officials are meeting in Venice, Italy, this weekend, to accelerate access to vaccines around the world.
She warned of a worsening two-track recovery that threatened to leave developing countries far behind. Providing faster access to vaccinations could potentially save more than half a million lives in the next six months alone, she said.
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