The White House says the U.S. will share more COVID-19 vaccines with the world, including directing 75% of excess doses through the UN-backed COVAX global.
The White House says the U.S. will share more COVID-19 vaccines with the world, including directing 75% of excess doses through the UN-backed COVAX global.
WASHINGTON President Joe Biden announced Thursday the U.S. will donate 75% of its unused COVID-19 vaccines to the U.N.-backed COVAX global vaccine sharing program, acting as more Americans have…
“As long as this pandemic is raging anywhere in the world, the American people will still be vulnerable,” Biden said in a statement. “And the United States is committed to bringing the same urgency to international vaccination efforts that we have demonstrated at home.”
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. “will retain the say on where the doses distributed through COVAX ultimately go.
“We’re not seeking to extract concessions, we’re not extorting, we’re not imposing conditions the way that other countries who are providing doses are doing; we’re doing none of those things, said Sullivan. “These are doses that are being given, donated free and clear to these countries, for the sole purpose of improving the public health situation and helping end the pandemic.”
Kumbh Mela: How a superspreader festival seeded COVID-19 across India
Millions of Hindu pilgrims came from around the country to take a ritual dip in the Ganges River,
then returned home carrying COVID-19. These are their stories
By Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Aakash Hassan / The Guardian, Delhi, India
On April 12, as India registered another 169,000 new COVID-19 cases to overtake Brazil as the second-worst hit country, 3 million people gathered on the shores of the Ganges River.
They were there, in the ancient city of Haridwar in the state of Uttarakhand, to take a ritual dip in the holy river. The bodies, squashed together in a pack of devotion and religious fervor, paid no visible heed to COVID-19 protocols.