USA unveils COVID-19 vaccine sharing plan with the world, Canada a priority

Global News shows that USA on Thursday unveiled plans to share its first 25 million of its COVID-19 vaccines with the world, with nearly 6 million doses targeted towards "regional priorities and partner recipients," including Canada and Mexico, among other countries.

At this point in time, it seems unclear how many doses Canada would be offered or if the country would accept them or which vaccine would be sent.

The United States will donate nearly 19 million doses through the COVAX international vaccine sharing program, the White House said during the briefing on Wednesday.

Through COVAX, some 6 million doses would go to Latin America and the Caribbean, about 7 million doses to South and Southeast Asia and roughly 5 million to Africa.

Other beneficiaries of the priority group include the Republic of Korea, the West Bank and Gaza, Ukraine, Kosovo, Haiti, Georgia, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen and United Nations front-line workers.

A so-called "vaccine" is really a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious disease. A vaccine typically (but not always) contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins, or one of its surface proteins. The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as a threat, destroy it, and to further recognize and destroy any of the microorganisms associated with that agent that it may encounter in the future. Vaccines can be prophylactic (to prevent or ameliorate the effects of a future infection by a natural or "wild" pathogen), or therapeutic (to fight a certain disease that has already occurred, such as cancer).

In biology, a "pathogen" (Greek: πάθος pathos "suffering", "passion" and -γενής -genēs "producer of") in the oldest and broadest sense, is really any organism that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ.

The term "pathogen" came into use in the 1880s. Typically, the term is used to describe an infectious microorganism or agent, such as a virus, bacterium, protozoan, prion, viroid, or fungus. Small animals, such as certain worms or insects, can also cause or transmit disease. However, these animals are usually, in common parlance, referred to as parasites rather than pathogens. The scientific study of microscopic organisms, including microscopic pathogenic organisms, is certainly called microbiology, while parasitology refers to the scientific study of parasites and the organisms that host them.