“The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the President of the United States, Joe Biden, announced a new EU-US partnership to help vaccinate the world,” says the community executive in a statement.

In the partnership signed within the scope of the United Nations General Assembly, which is taking place in New York and in which the two responsible parties participate, the “objective of achieving a global vaccination rate of 70% by the UNGA in 2022 [in September] was set. next year]”, points out the institution.

Called the EU-US Global Immunization Partnership, the initiative “will help expand supply, improve delivery coordination and remove bottlenecks in supply chains”.

In a joint position released today, Ursula von der Leyen and Joe Biden underline that “vaccination is the most effective response to the pandemic” and, “with the United States and Europe being technological leaders in advanced vaccination platforms, taking into account decades of investments in research and development”, it is “vital to aggressively pursue an agenda to vaccinate the world”.

“Coordinated US and EU leadership will help expand supply, deliver in a more coordinated and efficient way, and manage constraints on supply chains, [which] will show the strength of a transatlantic partnership in facilitating global immunization , while allowing for more progress through multilateral and regional initiatives”, stress the leaders.

One of the commitments under this partnership is, from the outset, the sharing of vaccines with low- and middle-income countries, with the EU pledging to donate more than 500 million doses and the United States to provide more than 1.1 billion through the Covax global access mechanism.

Another goal is to ensure “readiness” in the availability of vaccines, with Brussels and Washington agreeing to support and coordinate vaccine delivery, logistics and immunization programs.

The EU and the United States are also committed to investing in the manufacture and distribution of vaccines and therapies and in overcoming the challenges of the supply chain.

Covid-19 has caused at least 4,705,691 deaths worldwide, out of more than 229.48 million infections with the new coronavirus recorded since the start of the pandemic, according to the latest report by the Agence France-Presse.

In Portugal, since March 2020, 17,933 people have died and 1,063,991 confirmed cases of infection have been recorded, according to data from the Directorate-General for Health.

The respiratory disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China, and currently with variants identified in countries such as the United Kingdom, India, South Africa, Brazil or Peru.