U.S. Offers Afghanistan 3 Million Covid Vaccine Doses

KABUL—The Biden administration plans to deliver three million doses of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine next week to Afghanistan, which is battling its deadliest wave of the pandemic amid a rapidly deteriorating security situation.

The White House is offering the single-dose vaccines ahead of President Biden’s Friday meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Afghanistan’s chief peace negotiator, Abdullah Abdullah. They plan to discuss how Washington can continue supporting the embattled Afghan government, which lost large territories to the Taliban this month, once the U.S. military completes its withdrawal.

Mr. Biden aims to press Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah—who ran against the Afghan president in elections in 2014 and 2019—to align more closely and create a broader front against the Taliban, if Washington is to continue supporting Kabul, according to a senior administration official.

Covid-19 cases and deaths have surged in Afghanistan, a nation of 40 million people, since late May, largely because of the spread from India and Pakistan of the Delta variant, which is more infectious and more resistant to existing vaccines.

According to official statistics, which account for only a fraction of cases because the government doesn’t control much of the countryside and because many Afghans have no access to testing or healthcare, an average of 85 people died of Covid-19 every day in Afghanistan over the past week.