[Anchor]

Britain and the United States have announced plans to deliver coronavirus vaccines to some of the world's poorest countries in the next few weeks.

Speaking ahead of the G7 meeting, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the U.K. would donate 100 million doses over the coming year.

U.S. President Joe Biden has promised half a billion Pfizer shots.

The BBC's Jon Sopel reports.

[Reporter]

Joe Biden is here to show global leadership, that America is back and that the democracies, they're not just surviving, they're flourishing. And I think you've got to see that the announcement of these 500 million Pfizer vaccines to go to the poorest countries in the world as part of that, as a rejoinder to China and Russia and what they've been doing.

This is vaccine diplomacy.

It might seem ugly to be competitive over it, but that is what is going on.

[Anchor]

Dr. Ayoade Alakija, co-chair of the African Union's COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery Alliance, welcomed the offers from the U.S. and Britain, but said much more needed to be done.

[Clip: Alakija]
"The world is, I'm sure, incredibly grateful for this gesture. But we know that there's a shortfall of billions of vaccines. We have over 7 billion people in this world who currently, about 5.5 billion right now, need vaccines and only about 2.5 billion have so far been delivered into countries."