US President Joe Biden plans to buy 500 million doses of US pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc's (NYSE:PFE) COVID-19 vaccine and donate them to over 90 countries, Reuters news agency reported on Thursday.

This would be the largest ever COVID-19 vaccine donation by a single country.

Pfizer and its partner, German biotechnology company BioNTech (Nasdaq:BNTX), confirmed they will provide 200 million doses in 2021 and 300 million doses in the first half of 2022, which the US will distribute to 92 lower-income countries and the African Union. These doses, which will be produced at Pfizer's US production sites, will be provided at a not-for-profit price.

This new donation by the US comes on top of about 80 million doses it has already pledged to donate by the end of June 2021 and USD2bn in funding earmarked for the COVAX global vaccination programme led by the World Health Organization and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, the White House said.