Helping overcome COVID-19 vaccine shortage could rebuild US standing: FT

LONDON - The United States could rebrand itself by helping overcome the global COVID-19 vaccine shortage, the Financial Times said recently in an opinion article.

"The US could show itself capable of giving the world's poor what they need, as opposed to lecturing from a distance," it said.

According to the World Bank's Multilateral Data Dashboard, though the US has promised 1 billion doses of vaccines to the world's poorer countries, "just 111 million have been shipped, which is enough to give 5 percent of Africa one dose," the article said.

"By contrast, the US has secured two and a half times what it will need for its own people, which will leave more than 1 billion surplus shots," it noted.

This week, US President Joe Biden will host a so-called "democracy summit." "In practice, needles in people's arms would do more than a thousand such summits to get the world's attention," the article said.