WHILE about 37 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated, many nations struggle to get vaccines and have turned to other world powers like China and Russia to secure doses.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday announced the U.S. will send 20 million doses of federally authorized COVID-19 vaccines to other countries. That’s in addition to the 60 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine the Biden administration committed to be sent to other nations by July.

The United States ordered enough vaccines to vaccinate its population twice, while many other countries are still struggling to secure them. A United Nations program backed by the U.S. has so far delivered fewer than 70 million coronavirus vaccine doses worldwide when billions are needed.

The World Health Organization announced the world is at risk of “vaccine apartheid.”

Dr. David Agus, CBS News medical contributor, said that if other countries don’t vaccinate, they could create more COVID variants that are a danger to all.

“It is a moral imperative. It is a scientific imperative that we vaccinate the globe not only to help other people but to protect us,” he said.

While the U.S. has promised 80 million vaccine doses, according to monitoring groups, China and Russia have done deals to deliver around 600 million doses each globally.

Freymann said President Biden’s announcement to deliver those 80 million doses is a small step in the right direction.

“As it finishes vaccinating its own population, it’s going to have hundreds of millions of extra doses to start exporting,” he said.

(SD-Agencies)