Source: United States Senator for Massachusetts Ed Markey
Goal is to vaccinate 70 percent of world population by September 2022
Washington (October 27, 2021) – Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (IL-08), co-founders of the COVID-19 Global Vaccination Caucus, today sent letters to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Department of State, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) urging the agencies to provide targets and a clear outline for how the administration plans to vaccinate 70 percent of the world population by September 2022. The Administration has made the commitment to donate more than 1.1 billion vaccines to low- and middle-income countries, along with pledging key investments needed to support mitigation measures to minimize the secondary impacts of COVID-19. Congress has authorized and appropriated substantial funding for vaccine manufacturing, production, and distribution. In their letter to OMB, the lawmakers seek answers to better understand how this funding is being distributed to meet the global demand for vaccines, and the need for additional funds to meet these goals. In the letter to USAID and the State Department, the lawmakers request specific targets and plans for meeting the global vaccination goal set by President Biden.
“Ending the global pandemic must remain a top humanitarian and national security objective, especially given the risk that new emerging variants pose,” write the lawmakers in their letter to the State Department and USAID. “The United States has a chance to demonstrate to the world that it can lead this once-in-a-lifetime push to save lives and catalyze the global economy when it matters most.”
Rough estimates of Biden’s goal show that in order to hit the 70 percent vaccination target, an additional four to five billion doses of vaccine must be manufactured, delivered and administered around the globe, equating to an estimated 400 million vaccines every month for the next ten months. Only 0.5 percent of doses administered to date have reached low-income countries and the entire African continent has only a seven percent vaccination rate.
Co-signers of the letter to the Department of State and USAID include Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Representatives Tom Malinowski (NJ-07) and Mark Pocan (WI-02), Lloyd Doggett (TX-35), Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), Norma Torres (CA-35), Ro Khanna (CA-17), and Salud Carbajal (CA-24).
Co-signers of the letter to OMB include Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), and Representatives Tom Malinowski (NJ-07) and Mark Pocan (WI-02), Lloyd Doggett (TX-35), Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), Norma Torres (CA-35), Ro Khanna (CA-17), Salud Carbajal (CA-24), and Jake Auchincloss (MA-04).