Biden administration requests 5 billion to fight COVID-19 globally

The Biden administration on Friday requested $5 billion for the global COVID-19 response, including boosting vaccination rates in other countries, according to a congressional aide familiar with the request.

The request includes $2.55 billion for global vaccinations, as well as additional funding for treatments and other assistance, the aide said.

The request, which was first reported by Politico, is significantly less than the $17 billion that advocates and many Democratic lawmakers had been pushing for.

Some lawmakers had grown frustrated with the administration for not putting enough emphasis on global vaccinations, which experts say are important to try to stop new variants from forming that could also threaten the United States.

"USAID regularly briefs Congress about our global COVID-19 response efforts, and in a Friday conversation with Congressional staff, USAID officials discussed immediate resource needs to accelerate vaccine uptake globally, expand other critical health interventions to save lives, protect against the emergence and spread of future variants, and continue providing COVID-19 prevention, mitigation, and response support for vulnerable populations," said a spokesperson for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Some advocates and experts criticized the request as being too small.

"This is a disappointingly low request relative to the need and the opportunity for US leadership," tweeted Krishna Udayakumar, director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center.

"5 billion would be far, far better than nothing, and if approved can help save many lives," Peter Maybarduk, access to medicines director at the progressive group Public Citizen, wrote in an email. "But it is a depressingly small figure compared to what is required to end the global pandemic, or even to meet the White House's global vaccination targets."

The global request comes on top of a $30 billion request focused on domestic needs, which has already faced some resistance from lawmakers, particularly Republicans wary of new COVID-19 spending.

The Biden administration points to the 1.2 billion doses of vaccine it has already pledged, of which around 400 million have been delivered so far. It says that it is focusing on helping boost logistical efforts to get those shots into arms around the world.

Advocates and some Democratic lawmakers have been pushing for additional steps, though, like compelling vaccine makers to share their know-how globally, and boosting manufacturing of vaccines.