Statement: 20 Million Vaccine Doses Are Not Enough
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The White House announced today it will donate 20 million doses of the NIH-Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines to other countries, on top of a previous 60 million doses. Public Citizen and more than 60 U.S. groups have called on President Joe Biden to launch a global vaccine manufacturing program to end the pandemic and build vaccine infrastructure for the future. Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program, issued the following statement:
“Twenty million is a depressingly tiny figure compared to the global need; akin to tossing a bucket of water at a raging inferno. If India were to receive all 20 million doses, it would vaccinate less than one percent of its population, beyond what it has already.
“Communities around the world have no idea when, or if, the vaccine they desperately need to protect their people from death and further suffering from the coronavirus will arrive.
“Dose donations are welcome, but they are no substitute for a plan of scale and ambition to end the pandemic. The world is in dire need of such a plan from leaders including President Biden. The U.S. government should invest $25 billion in urgent vaccine manufacturing to make eight billion doses of mRNA vaccine within a year’s time and share those vaccine recipes with the world.”