America is back, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says

Daily US Times: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has told in an interview with BBC that “America is back” and is fully engaged in helping resolve issues including the pandemic, climate change and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Mr Blinken stressed the importance of worldwide vaccination against Covid-19. This is his first international interview.

Mr Blinken also criticised China for its lack of transparency in uncovering how coronavirus emerged.

It marks a break with the “America First” policy of former President Donald Trump.

US Secretary of State was speaking as the leaders of the G7 richest industrialised nations met in virtual session.

The US is giving $4bn to the Covax vaccination scheme, a project aims to deliver more than two billion doses to people in 190 countries in less than a year.

Mr Blinken said: “Unless and until everyone in the world is vaccinated, then no-one is really fully safe, because if the virus is out there and continuing to proliferate, it’s also going to be mutating.”

“And if it’s mutating, it’s also going to come back and bite people everywhere,” he added.

The United States has now vaccinated more than 27 million of its own people. However, in many poorer countries, vaccination has yet to begin.

Mr Blinken also accused Beijing of failing to share information that might shed light on the origins of coronavirus.

A World Health Organization (WHO) investigation team spent four weeks in China on a fact-finding mission at the beginning of 2021. However, two experts from the WHO team said afterwards that China refused to grant full access to the data they sought.

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