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Latest Biden announcement signals the global vaccine supply is finally opening up

10 June 2021
 Dan Ackermann

The global vaccine supply is finally opening up for countries that desperately need the ammo in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Driving the news: The Biden administration will buy 500 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to share with countries around the world, with the option to buy an additional 200 million.

The news came just a day after the Mastercard Foundation donated $1.3 billion to Africa's COVID-19 response.

  • It also comes amid increasingly serious debate over the TRIPS waiver, which would suspend intellectual property protections COVID-19 vaccines.

What we're watching: The administration has already said President Biden will press other rich democracies to share doses.

  • The "G7 will vow to deliver at least 1 billion extra doses of vaccines over [the] next year to cover 80% of the world's adult population," according to a draft communique seen by Bloomberg News, their senior White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs tweeted.

But, but, but: There needs to be more investment into readiness to deliver the vaccines.

  • "By the end of this year, most countries globally will see distribution, delivery, and demand as the key constraints to vaccination, not supply," Duke's Global Health Institute founding director Krishna Udayakumar told Axios.

What's next: Biden could pursue similar deals with Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.

  • "We would be very interested to help ... provide more doses to low-income countries," Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said via email. "We are investing to get up to 3B doses in 2022 and we are doing this manufacturing capacity increase to ensure we can help."

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.