The move comes as the United States faces its own scarcity.
President Joe Biden is scheduled to announce Friday that the United States will contribute $ 2 billion to a UN-backed program that aims to distribute doses of COVID-19 vaccine to people in the world’s poorest countries, according to senior officials. Biden administration.
Congress had already earmarked the money in December for the U.S. Agency for International Development to provide Gavi, an international vaccine distribution alliance. Congress provided a total of $ 4 billion and officials said the United States would give the rest to Gavi during that year and in 2022.
The move, which the White House said Biden intends to announce during a virtual meeting of Group of Seven leaders, comes as the United States faces a lack of sufficient doses to vaccinate its own population, despite the situation in the poorest nations it is much worse. .
To date, 10 countries have administered 75% of all vaccines against COVID-19, while more than 130 countries have not yet received a single dose, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
Many countries cannot compete with richer countries like the United States to buy the limited amounts of vaccine doses available from manufacturers. Together with the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations foundation, Gavi has a global vaccination initiative called COVAX that aims to address this disparity by distributing doses more equitably.
Although then-President Donald Trump signed a December law allocating $ 4 billion to Gavi, he had previously refused to support COVAX and his administration also moved to cut ties with the ‘World Health Organization.
Biden has dramatically reversed this approach, keeping the U.S. in the WHO and making the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic around the world a national security priority.
But ending the global outbreak has proven complicated with the limited availability of vaccine doses.
The United States has so far bought 600 million doses of vaccine, but does not intend to give it to other countries until, as Biden said in a Jan. 21 memorandum, “there is a sufficient supply in the United States. “.
A senior government official said Thursday that “this commitment to COVAX does not affect the vaccination program in the United States at all.”
“While we can’t share doses of vaccines right now, while we’re focused on U.S. vaccinations and arm shots,” the official said, “we’re working hard to support COVAX, strengthen global vaccination in everyone will determine the timing of when we will have a sufficient supply in the United States and we will be able to give surplus vaccines. “
Meanwhile, China and Russia have given doses of their own-produced COVID-19 vaccines to partners and developing countries as a form of “vaccine diplomacy.” The United States has not yet followed suit.
Administration officials argued that vaccinating people abroad protected the health of Americans nationwide.
“Decreasing the burden of the disease decreases the risk for everyone in the world, including Americans,” the official said. “It also decreases the risk of variants occurring, like the ones we’re seeing now. So it’s very important to increase vaccination globally, while of course we prioritize vaccinations here at home.”
The official said the first $ 2 billion tranche would be given “in a matter of days to weeks” and “ideally by the end of this month.” Of the additional $ 2 billion, the United States plans to provide the first $ 500 million “fairly quickly” to “stimulate some of these initial doses,” but intends to at least curb the rest to encourage other countries. to make promises of his own, the official said.
“This pandemic will not end unless we put an end to it all over the world,” the official added.
ABC News’ Conor Finnegan contributed the information.