Last checked at 
(Adds plan details, national security adviser, IMF comment,
Public Citizen reaction)
By Jeff Mason and Carl O'Donnell
WASHINGTON, June 3 (Reuters) - The White House on Thursday
laid out a plan for the United States to share 25 million
surplus COVID-19 vaccine doses with the world and said it would
lift some restrictions to allow other countries to buy U.S.-made
supplies for vaccine production more easily.
President Joe Biden said the United States would share the
vaccines without expectation of political favors in return.
Biden has pledged to share some 80 million COVID-19 vaccines
internationally this month.
The United States will donate nearly 19 million doses
through the COVAX international vaccine sharing program, he said
in a statement. Through COVAX, some 6 million doses would go to
Latin America and the Caribbean, about 7 million doses to South
and Southeast Asia and roughly 5 million to Africa.
The remaining doses, amounting to just over 6 million, would
go directly from the United States to countries including
Canada, Mexico, India and South Korea, he said.
"We are sharing these doses not to secure favors or extract
concessions," Biden said in a statement. "We are sharing these
vaccines to save lives and to lead the world in bringing an end
to the pandemic, with the power of our example and with our
values."
Although the United States is working through the COVAX
facility co-run by the World Health Organization, the White
House retains final say in which countries receive U.S. doses
and how many, said national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
The White House will base donation decisions on "factors
included achieving global coverage, responding to crises... and
helping as many countries as possible," Sullivan said, adding
that the United States intends to prioritize its neighbors,
including Canada, Mexico and countries in Central and South
America.
Biden has come under pressure from the world community to
share the U.S. surplus of COVID-19 vaccines.
For months, the White House has remained focused on getting
Americans vaccinated after the coronavirus killed more than half
a million people in the United States within the last year.
But the president has promised that the United States would
become a supplier to other countries and pledged to send abroad
at least 20 million doses of the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE
, Moderna Inc and Johnson & Johnson
vaccines, on top of 60 million AstraZeneca Plc doses he
had already planned to give to other countries.
The 25 million doses Biden announced on Thursday will not
include supply from AstraZeneca, the White House said.
LIFTING SOME RESTRICTIONS
The White House is also removing special powers it granted
through the Defense Production Act (DPA) to certain vaccine
makers that received U.S. funding but do not yet have U.S.
approvals, including AstraZeneca, Sanofi SA/GlaxoSmithKline Plc
, and Novavax Inc.
The DPA ratings give U.S. producers priority access to
supplies and equipment needed to manufacture the vaccines that
are in short supply around the world. Lifting them could free up
raw materials for major vaccine makers elsewhere, especially the
Serum Institute of India (SII).
Invoking the DPA helped build a huge local vaccine
production system, while some companies overseas have struggled
to get needed supplies to ramp up vaccine production.
SII, the world's largest vaccine maker and a top supplier of
COVID-19 shots to low- and middle-income countries, had
criticized the use of the DPA, and Reuters reported in May that
a shortage of U.S.-made raw materials would hit production of
Novavax's vaccine.
"That is a start, at least – the Biden administration acting
to stop harming the global response. Now, we need a DPA for the
world," said Peter Maybarduk, access to medicines director at
consumer watchdog Public Citizen, which has argued the United
States should use the DPA to scale up global vaccine production.
White House COVID adviser Jeff Zients said the United States
will continue to donate additional doses throughout the summer
as more supply becomes available.
The U.S. announcement came amid growing concern about the
huge disparity in vaccination rates in developing countries
versus advanced economies.
The heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank
on Thursday urged the Group of Seven advanced economies to
release any excess COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries as
soon as possible, and called on manufacturers to ramp up
production to benefit poor countries.
Pfizer has begun independently exporting millions of its
U.S.-made shots largely to countries in Central and South
America, Reuters reported last month.
Many Latin American countries have a dire need for COVID-19
vaccines as they combat outbreaks. Brazil has been one of the
world’s hardest hit countries by the pandemic, reporting a total
of more than 15 million cases and 400,000 deaths, while Peru
this week revised its COVID-19 death toll, making it the country
with the worst per capita fatality rate.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Carl O'Donnell; additional
reporting by Allison Martell and Andrea Shalal; Editing by
Chizu Nomiyama and Bill Berkrot)
