The United States (US) will help several countries, including India, to produce vaccines by themselves, President Joe Biden said on Tuesday, 3 August.
"We have committed to over half a billion doses. And we're trying to provide for more and provide for the capacity of countries like India to be able to produce the vaccine themselves. And we're helping them do that. That's what we're doing now," he said, as quoted by NDTV.
Biden said that the US has donated more than 110 million vaccine doses to 65 countries with the country so far having 'supported manufacturing efforts abroad through partnerships with Japan, India, Australia – known as the Quad'.
Biden said that the help is not just being provided to produce vaccines, but also with more testing, protective equipment, and personnel. "We have done it in India and elsewhere," Biden said, as quoted by NDTV.
Earlier on Tuesday, 3 August, the White House had said in a statement that the country will start shipping 500 million doses of Pfizer and BioNTech SE's vaccine in late August.
Biden further said that the US had contributed to the COVAX program more than any other country.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data suggested that 70% of US adults have had at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine. Over 60.6% of Americans above 18 years of age are fully vaccinated.
The current seven-day average of daily new cases increased 64.1 percent compared with the previous seven-day data, it said.
(With Inputs from Reuters, NDTV and IANS)
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