WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden, under pressure to aggressively address the global coronavirus vaccine shortage, will announce as early as Thursday that his administration will buy 500 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and donate them among about 100 countries over the next year, according to people familiar with the plan.
The White House reached the deal just in time for Biden’s eight-day European trip, which is his first opportunity to reassert the United States as a world leader and restore relations that were badly frayed by President Donald Trump.
Jose Flores gets a COVID-19 vaccine from Katherine Yu at a Coney Island subway station in New York, May 12, 2021 [Image: James Estrin/The New York Times]
“We have to end COVID-19, not just at home, which we’re doing, but everywhere,” Biden told U.S. troops after landing at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk, England. “There’s no wall high enough to keep us safe from this pandemic or the next biological threat we face, and there will be others. It requires coordinated multilateral action.”
People familiar with the Pfizer deal said the United States would pay for the doses at a “not for profit” price. The first 200 million doses will be distributed by the end of this year, followed by 300 million by next June, they said. The doses will be distributed through Covax, the international vaccine-sharing initiative.
By: Sharon LaFraniere, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Noah Weiland
c.2021 The New York Times Company
