Vaccines to be made available for others depending on surplus: Kerry

The United States has assured of making Covid-19 vaccines available for other countries including Bangladesh once they have surplus.

"I can assure you when we can reach the level of the critical mass vaccination and we've surplus, we'll absolutely make vaccines available in whatever different ways," said John Kerry, the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.

While responding to a question at a joint briefing on Friday, Kerry said US President Joe Biden believes deeply that they have a responsibility - moral and practical - to bring the whole world back from this break.

He, however, said he cannot give the numbers and schedule but he can guarantee that there is a concerted effort to reach out globally to help all with this pandemic. "We all benefit by getting this pandemic conquered."

Kerry said their only agenda is that they have to work on and advance significantly if they can do this together.

"The pandemic and climate crisis underscore that we've to do it together, we've to work together and we've to depend on each other," he said.

Kerry said Covid underscores that in a great way they are together and it is pandemic that reaches across the border and affects all the people. "We've to beat Covid together."

Referring to President Biden's discussion with the leaders of India, Australia and Japan, he said they decided on a distribution effort to try to make sure that vaccines will be distributed to the countries that cannot afford it and do not have the technology.

President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that he's bumping up his deadline by two weeks for states to make all adults in the US eligible for coronavirus vaccines. But even as he expressed optimism about the pace of vaccinations, he warned Americans that the nation is not yet out of the woods when it comes to the pandemic.

Biden also announced that 150 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been shot into arms since his inauguration on January 20. That puts the president well on track to meet his new goal of 200 million shots administered by his 100th day in office on April 30.

Biden's original goal had been 100 million shots by the end of his first 100 days, but that number was reached in March.

Earlier, Kerry had a meeting Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen. Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Shahab Uddin, Saber Hossain Chowdhury, State Minister for Foreign Affairs M Shahriar Alam, Special Envoy for the Vulnerable Forum Presidency Abul Kalam Azad, Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen and US Ambassador to Bangladesh Earl Miller were present.