Eric LeCompte was quoted by Bloomberg in an article covering President Biden's virtual COVID-19 summit and call on rich nations to donate vaccines. Read an excerpt below and the full article here.   

Biden Calls on Rich Countries to Escalate Vaccine Donations

By Josh Wingrove

The new U.S. commitment is on top of a 500-million-dose donation announced in June at the Group of Seven summit in the U.K. Distribution of those vaccines began last month. Combined with 130 million doses shipped out so far that had initially been bought for domestic use, the U.S. donation total is now at least 1.13 billion doses, more than double the total delivered domestically.

Of those, at least 330 million have been pledged by the end of 2021. The remaining 800 million, including all of Biden’s new pledge, are to be delivered in 2022. 

This is the first time that the U.S. has set a global vaccination target, though advocates are urging more aggressive ones. The UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, has called for 70% of the world to be vaccinated by the end of June, three months before Biden’s timeline.

“In some ways June and September are just too late,” said Eric LeCompte, executive director of Jubilee USA Network, a non-profit group. He gave the U.S. credit for hosting the summit. “We’re so excited that they are taking leadership on this, because there is unfortunately a leadership void, but we needed to get all this done yesterday,” he said.