The European Union will donate at least 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to developing countries this year, bringing fresh donations to COVAX to a total of 180 million, Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission President announced Friday.
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He also confirmed that the EU will invest €1 billion ($1.2 billion) in African vaccine manufacturing facilities to help the continent become more self-sufficient in fighting the coronavirus.
“We must step up efforts to give access to vaccines to low and middle-income countries,” von der Leyen tweeted Friday. “We will do our part: #TeamEurope aims at donating at least 100 million doses to low and middle-income countries by the end of 2021.”
The doses are expected to be donated by EU member states such as Germany and France, either through the COVAX facility—a program for distributing COVID vaccines to low and middle-income countries or bilaterally.
The move comes after the U.S. said Monday that it will donate 20 million Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses to such countries, on top of the 60 million AstraZeneca doses it has already pledged to give, subject to a safety review.
That includes 100 million doses from Moderna, 200 million from J&J, and 1 billion from Pfizer and BioNTech—which will also supply up to 1.8 billion doses to the EU from December through 2023, under a much-anticipated deal that was made official on Thursday.
All the doses in the Pfizer/BioNTech agreement will be made in the EU, which has a population of just under 450 million.
Both the EU and the U.S. have made solid progress in their own vaccination campaigns—the U.S. more so, with nearly half the population having received at least one dose; a third of people in the EU can claim the same.
In poorer parts of the world, it’s very different. Just over 10 percent of people in India have received the first dose, while in Africa the figure stands at a mere 1.4 percent.
This inequality has for months been criticized by everyone from the World Health Organization to the International Monetary Fund and the Pope, and it is only recently that rich countries have been making their pledges.
The EU has, however, already promised €500 million in grant funding and guarantees to the COVAX facility. The U.S. has donated $2 billion to COVAX in recent months.
