Vaccines for the conflicting countries. The United States negotiated a deal with J&J
The US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, announced Wednesday that the US government has negotiated a deal between Johnson & Johnson and the COVAX Initiative to provide COVID-19 vaccines to conflict areas. He gave no other details of the agreement
Blinken announced the deal at the start of a video conference of secretaries of state in Washington on the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine inequality.
The head of US diplomacy did not specify how many vaccines will be delivered under the agreement or to what regions in the world and when they will be delivered.
See: UK to make COVID-19 vaccination demand for healthcare professionals
“We need to make sure that government-led vaccination campaigns do not ignore the unreachable people in our efforts. They also need to be protected. We want to protect people at risk from COVID-19 as soon as possible,” Blinken said.
COVAX . Initiative
The goal of the COVAX program is the equitable distribution of vaccines around the world and their delivery to developing countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization jointly lead COVAX as they work to increase vaccine availability.
On September 22, US President Joe Biden pledged to purchase an additional 500 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer to be donated to poor countries in 2022.
See: Study: A dose of ‘antibody cocktail’ against Covid-19 provides immunity for up to 8 months
Reuters points out that public health experts criticize rich countries for insufficient efforts to distribute vaccines to developing countries. He adds that when a booster dose was administered in the United States to all vaccinated people, many people around the world did not have a chance to receive their first injection.
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