Speeches Shim
COVID-19 is one of the greatest health challenges our world has ever faced. To beat the virus in the United States, we must also fight it abroad. USAID’s work to end the pandemic is keeping Americans safe, saving lives around the world, and rebuilding the U.S. and global economies.
We need to attack this virus globally, not just at home, because it’s in America’s self-interest to do so. The virus knows no boundaries. —President Joe Biden
USAID’s Global Response
COVID-19 knows no borders and no one is safe until everyone is safe. USAID is working around the clock to help save lives and end the pandemic for all. Since the beginning of the pandemic, USAID has supported more than 120 countries to contain and combat the virus. To date, USAID has provided more than $9 billion to intensify the fight against COVID-19 around the world, pave the way to global recovery, and strengthen global health security.
Only through collaboration can we collectively overcome COVID-19. —Administrator Samantha Power
USAID’s Programs
USAID is building on decades of global health leadership combating infectious diseases such as Ebola, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria to now fight COVID-19. USAID programs are helping deliver vaccines and get shots in arms, expand access to COVID-19 testing and treatment, protect and train health workers, deliver life-saving health commodities and equipment, share reliable public health information, and safeguard global health security. Yet USAID is not just fighting the disease—USAID is fighting to secure decades of development progress that the pandemic is unwinding. USAID programs are keeping kids in school, providing emergency food and hygiene assistance, helping people find work, preventing democratic backsliding, addressing gender-based violence, and tackling other devastating impacts of the pandemic.
USAID is committed to building back a better world, one that is better prepared to prevent, detect, and respond to future biological threats, and where all people can live safe, prosperous, and healthy lives. — USAID COVID-19 Task Force Director Jeremy Konyndyk
Resources
- Private Sector Engagement
- USAID COVID-19 fact sheets
- USAID COVID-19 guidance for implementing partners
- American Rescue Plan
- U.S. Global Response and Recovery Framework
- COVID-19 Safety Plan & Workplace Guidelines
- CDC COVID-19 information
- Get involved
The spread of COVID-19 has shown that an infectious disease threat anywhere can be a threat everywhere. USAID is dedicated to ending this pandemic for everyone, everywhere.
LATEST UPDATES
USAID Operating Status
Last updated: June 10, 2022
Today, USAID is committing $20 million to launch lifesaving test-and-treat strategies targeting those at the highest risk of contracting COVID-19, while also planning to invest $200 million in a new fund to prevent future pandemics and strengthen health security. To the countries with lower vaccine coverage, the world stands ready to support you. This Summit should make that clear if it wasn’t clear before. Where you show leadership and political will, the global community will work to provide necessary doses and the support to get those doses into arms. The commitments announced here today will provide new momentum to help you accelerate your campaigns.
In March, the Administration requested $22.5 billion in additional COVID-19 response funding, including $5 billion to support the immediate needs of the global COVID-19 response. This global funding would enable a significant expansion of our Global VAX surge efforts to another 20 to 25 countries and other global COVID-19 vaccination priorities, including the rollout of boosters and pediatric doses. With more than 30 countries qualifying as severely undervaccinated, it remains critical to expand the initiative beyond the 11 surge countries we currently support. This request will also enable us to shrink the severe gaps in global access to testing, oxygen capacity, and antiviral treatments—enabling lifesaving services for more than 100 million people—as well as enhanced monitoring of potential or emerging variants.
Failure to continue our supplemental global funding would abdicate U.S. leadership even as the People’s Republic of China continues its transactional approach to pandemic response and global health; it would weaken health systems that are crucial to fighting this and future pandemics; and it would amount to a surrender to the inevitability of dangerous new variants. Failing to provide supplemental global funding would also jeopardize our long-term baseline pandemic preparedness, global health, and health security investments. In sum: it would be a geopolitical, ethical, health security, and economic mistake of historic proportions.
Yesterday, Administrator Samantha Power participated in a virtual fireside chat with David Malpass, President of the World Bank Group, at the World Bank Spring Meetings high-level event on Scaling up Vaccine Deployment. They discussed global efforts to turn COVID-19 vaccines into vaccinations, including recent country successes in driving up vaccination rates and examples of progress from USAID’s work in the field. They also discussed what actions are now demanded of all stakeholders, especially to address critical COVID-19 vaccine financing gaps.
The United States, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), continues to build upon its ongoing, robust COVID-19 response in Thailand. Coinciding with World Immunization Week, the two agencies are providing nearly three million syringes and associated vaccine delivery supplies to hospitals and health centres to support Thailand’s nationwide COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
On April 19, Administrator Samantha Power met with the President of Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina, to discuss the impact of climate change and COVID-19 in Madagascar, as well as ways to strengthen anti-corruption efforts in the country.
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