EU and US propose target of 70% of world vaccinated by next year

Today (18 October) the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that together with the Biden administration will propose a target of 70% vaccination for the world. 

Von der Leyen said the EU will do its part, on top of its expertise the EU will donate at least  500 million doses of vaccines to the most vulnerable countries. She said that other countries had to set up and that she would work with Prime Minister Draghi and President Biden to rally G20 leaders to commit to this target. 

One billion vaccines exported from the EU

Von der Leyen said the EU had reached an important milestone in exporting more than 1 billion COVID-19 vaccines to the rest of the world: “Vaccines from the European Union have been shipped to more than 150 countries, just to name a few to Japan, to Turkey to the UK to New Zealand, to South Africa to Brazil.”

“We delivered around 87 million doses to the low- and middle-income countries through COVAX. So we made good on our promise, we have always shared our vaccine nation production capacity fairly with the rest of the world. We've said that at least every second dose is produced in the European Union will go abroad.”

Von der Leyen added that this hadn’t stopped the EU from reaching its target of more than 75% of the adult population fully vaccinated. She pointed to the fact that the EU managed to do this even when vaccines were scarce.

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