Today's D Brief: Biden’s COVID summit; Vaccine diplomacy, cont.; Milley in Helsinki; Lithuania’s Chinese phone warning; And a bit more.
By Ben Watson
September 22, 2021 10:50 AM ET
The D Brief
Two days after COVID-19 became America’s deadliest pandemic in recorded history, U.S. President Joe Biden is hosting a virtual COVID summit of world leaders. According to White House officials, Biden will announce that the U.S. is buying another 500 million Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines and will send them to low- and lower-middle income countries. “They’ll start shipping out in January,” which brings “our total to over 1.1 billion vaccines donated to the world…free of charge, no strings attached,” officials told reporters in a preview.
One stumbling block: Many of those developing nations often don’t have the infrastructure needed to handle a sudden influx of refrigerated vaccines from the U.S. The Pentagon has even stepped up and provided “$8.6 million in cold-chain storage containers…to 16 countries,” the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. But otherwise, “A Unicef spokesman said around 80% of countries that have asked for ultracold freezers should receive them by the end of September.”
In case you were wondering: The U.S. is ahead of China when it comes to donated vaccines, having already “donated and delivered more than 114 million doses…to around 80 mostly developing nations across Asia, Africa, and Latin America,” CNBC reported on Sept. 9. China follows with 34 million donated doses, trailed closely by Japan with just over 23 million.
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2021/09/the-d-brief-september-22-2021/185521/
