U.S. TO SHARE COVID-19 VACCINES AFTER INOCULATING ITS CITIZENS

US President Joe Biden on Wednesday said that the US will share its doses of coronavirus vaccines "If we have a surplus," Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) reported.

"If we have a surplus, we're going to share it with the rest of the world," Biden said at the White House.

"The virus is not something that can be stopped by a fence, no matter how high you build a fence or a wall. So we're not going to be ultimately safe until the world is safe. So we are going to start off making sure that Americans are taken care of first, and we are then going to try to help the rest of the world."

Biden also said he directed White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients and the Department of Health and Human Services to order an additional 100 million doses of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine, which was granted emergency approval by the US Food and Drug Administration late last month.

The US president has promised to have enough vaccines for all 260 million US adults by the end of May.

The total US population is about 328 million people.

The US government has so far secured the delivery of 300 million doses each of Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer vaccines by the end of July. Those vaccinations require two shots.

The US government initially gave no timeline on the delivery of the Johnson & Johnson jabs. The US pharmaceutical company Merck has agreed to produce its competitor's vaccine to increase its supply, in a deal supported financially by the government.

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