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Dear President Biden:
 
As students whose education and formative years have been massively disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, we call on you to please use the full power of the presidency to expand access to vaccines, tests and treatments worldwide. Urgent action by your office is needed both to save lives and to prevent new variants that could undo the progress made against COVID to date.
 
While COVID vaccines are widely available throughout the United States, this is not true for large parts of the world. Despite now being in the third year of the pandemic, billions of people across the globe still have not had access to a single COVID shot. And billions more have not had access to the mRNA vaccines that, as of this moment, are the best known safeguards against the most recent COVID variants.  
 
The failure to address these shortfalls continues to cost thousands of lives each day, expose generations to the poorly-understood risks of long COVID and increase the likelihood of viral mutations that create new variant waves that could restart disruptions to our lives here and throughout the globe.  
 
At a point when the United States is relying on “test and treat” strategies in an attempt to transition COVID from a deadly pandemic into a manageable endemic phase, we are especially dismayed that your administration has opposed attempts by South Africa, India and dozens of other nations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to eliminate intellectual property barriers that impede expanding access to COVID diagnostics and therapeutics. Protections for pharmaceutical monopolies must not be allowed to stand in the way of increased vaccine, test and treatment production around the globe.  
 
As part of a comprehensive effort to boost production of critical COVID medical tools around the globe, we urge you to please support a comprehensive waiver of all WTO rules standing in the way of vaccine, test and treatment production; to use your executive authority to compel pharmaceutical companies to share vaccine and treatment recipes and other technical know-how with qualified producers around the world; and to help fund the speed-up of vaccine and treatment production domestically and internationally.
 
The idea that “no one is safe until everyone is safe” is more than just a slogan. Prioritizing the expansion of the COVID vaccine, test and treatment production needed to prevent needless death and suffering abroad is both a moral imperative and a matter of justice. Global vaccine and treatment equity is also critical to protecting the future for students like ourselves.  
 
The public health, economic health and social health of our nation and others relies upon your leadership.  
 
Sincerely,