washington president joe biden will appeal for a renewed international commitment to attacking covid19 as he convenes a second virtual summit on the pandemic and marks 1 million deaths in the united statesas a nation we must not grow numb to such sorrow biden said in a statement to heal we must remember we must remain vigilant against this pandemic and do everything we can to save as many lives as possiblethe president called on congress to provide more funding for testing vaccines and treatments something lawmakers have been unwilling to deliver so farthe lack of funding biden has requested another 225 billion of what he calls critically needed money is a reflection of faltering resolve at home that jeopardizes the global response to the pandemiceight months after he used the first such summit to announce an ambitious pledge to donate 12 billion vaccine doses to the world the urgency of the us and other nations to respond has wanedmomentum on vaccinations and treatments has faded even as more infectious variants rise and billions of people across the globe remain unprotectedthe white house said biden will address the opening of the virtual summit thursday morning with prerecorded remarks and will make the case that addressing covid19 must remain an international priority the us is cohosting the summit along with germany indonesia senegal and belizethe us has shipped nearly 540 million vaccine doses to more than 110 countries and territories according to the state department by far more than any other donor nationafter the delivery of more than 1 billion vaccines to the developing world the problem is no longer that there arent enough shots but a lack of logistical support to get doses into arms according to government data more than 680 million donated vaccine doses have been left unused in developing countries because they were set to expire soon and couldnt be administered quickly enough as of march 32 poorer countries had used fewer than half of the covid19 vaccines they were sentus assistance to promote and facilitate vaccinations overseas dried up earlier this year and biden has requested about 5 billion for the effort through the rest of the yearwe have tens of millions of unclaimed doses because countries lack the resources to build out their cold chains which basically is the refrigeration systems to fight disinformation and to hire vaccinators white house press secretary jen psaki said this week she added that the summit is going to be an opportunity to elevate the fact that we need additional funding to continue to be a part of this effort around the worldwere going to continue to fight for more funding here psaki said but we will continue to press other countries to do more to help the world make progress as wellcongress has balked at the price tag for covid19 relief and has thus far refused to take up the package because of political opposition to the impending end of pandemicera migration restrictions at the