Law360 is providing free access to its coronavirus coverage to make sure all members of the legal community have accurate information in this time of uncertainty and change. Use the form below to sign up for any of our weekly newsletters. Signing up for any of our section newsletters will opt you in to the weekly Coronavirus briefing.
Sign up for our Health newsletter
You must correct or enter the following before you can sign up:
Thank You!
Law360 (June 10, 2021, 9:02 PM EDT) -- The U.S. is slated to buy half a billion COVID-19 vaccine doses from Pfizer to be donated to many "low- and lower middle-income countries" to try to put a stop to the pandemic, President Joe Biden said Thursday.
At a press conference in the U.K. on Thursday, Biden followed up on earlier reports that the U.S. would buy and then donate 200 million doses by the end of this year, and 300 million in the early part of next year.
Biden said that while many Americans have died of the virus, the U.S. knows the path to recovery. Beyond that, he said it was in the self-interest of the U.S. to save lives outside its borders.
"As long as the virus rages elsewhere, there's a risk of new mutations that could threaten our people," Biden said.
He said those doses would start to be sent out in August, and added that there would be "no strings attached" to the doses.
"80 years ago … American workers built tanks and planes and vehicles that helped defeat the global threat of fascism in World War II," Biden said.
He added that "now a new generation of American men and women … [are] going to build a new arsenal to defeat the current enemy of world peace … COVID-19."
Biden's announcement comes amid a broader debate on how to find solutions to the pandemic.
The U.S. announced its support for waiving intellectual property protections for vaccines, a proposal now being mulled over by the World Trade Organization.
The U.S. had been one of several wealthy countries that opposed the proposal at the WTO since it was introduced in October, but U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced the Biden administration's new position in early May.
Biden's remarks on Thursday announced a partnership that Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said will "help bring hundreds of millions of doses of our vaccine to the poorest countries around the world as quickly as possible."
"COVID-19 has impacted everyone, everywhere, and to win the battle against this pandemic, we must ensure expedited access to vaccines for all. I want to thank President Biden for his leadership in protecting the least advantaged of our global neighbors," he said. "Fair and equitable distribution has been our North Star since day one and we are proud to do our part to help vaccinate the world, a massive but an achievable undertaking."
--Additional reporting by Ryan Davis and Alyssa Aquino. Editing by Regan Estes.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
