The Biden administration will spend an additional $315 million in distributing vaccines around the world to vaccinate people in developing countries and help bring an end to the pandemic, The Hill reported.

Some countries have identified problems such as vaccines arriving too close to their expiration date and lacking proper cold storage, which has prevented them from being able to vaccinate as many people as other nations. Elements expected to be funded include cold storage, vaccination sites, deploying healthcare workers and other necessary logistics.

The U.S. is also prepared to spend $10 million in vaccine manufacturing in other countries and $75 million in strengthening the availability of oxygen, bringing the total to $400 million. The funds will come from the American Rescue Plan that President Joe Biden signed into law earlier this year. They also come after an initial $1.3 billion was spent in an effort to bolster vaccinations.

Advocates have been urging the Biden team to rapidly distribute as many vaccine doses around the world as quickly as possible to prevent other variants such as the Omicron variant from emerging. Axios has reported virtually no low-income countries will be able to vaccinate 40% of their population this year and many will miss the 20% mark by the end of 2021.

Many African countries have low vaccination rates and have seen the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and like many poor countries, they have to wait months for vaccines to arrive. These countries also have underfunded infrastructure which delays the delivery of the vaccines, and the supply chain crisis has only made it worse. There has been growing skepticism surrounding the vaccine in rural communities, driven by online misinformation, which further puts communities at risk.

“There’s no doubt that vaccine hesitancy is a factor in the rollout of vaccines,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the Africa director of the World Health Organization, told The New York Times.

Other African countries such as Zimbabwe and Malawi have not been able to use the supplies they have been given. There has also been a lack of investment in vaccine education and promotion.

“If the objective is to keep the U.S. and the rest of the world safe, it should be pretty obvious that the success of the domestic program depends on what happens internationally,” said Dr. Saad Omer, a Yale University epidemiologist.

Vox reported in November that more than 50 countries have vaccinated less than 25% of their populations and rich countries have received 50 times more vaccine doses than poorer nations. The vaccination gap has killed 6,000 people per day.

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