U.S. announces vaccine sharing plan

The United States will donate 75 percent of its unused COVID-19 vaccines to other countries, the Biden administration has announced.

Press Secretary Jen Psaki said President Joe Biden aims to send 80 million doses to the vaccine sharing program by the end of June, and some will ship out this week.

Where will the doses go? The first batch of about 25 million doses will largely go to the U.N.-backed COVAX program, with another 6 million shots for South and Central America, 7 million for Asia, and 5 million for Africa.

At a news conference Thursday, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said as Americans continue to get vaccinated, U.S. COVID-19 cases are plummeting.

The new seven-day rolling average of new cases is now just over 15,000 per day. At the January peak, new cases topped a quarter of a million per day.

Dig deeper: Read Charles Horton’s Q&A about getting back to normal post-vaccination.

This story originally appeared in WORLD. © 2021, reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.