“America is back” and is fully engaged in helping resolve issues including the pandemic, climate change and Iran’s nuclear ambitions, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has told the BBC.
In his first international interview, Mr Blinken stressed the importance of worldwide vaccination against Covid-19.
He also criticised China for its lack of transparency in uncovering how the coronavirus emerged.
It marks a break with the “America First” policy of Donald Trump.
Mr Blinken was speaking as the leaders of the G7 richest industrialised nations met in virtual session.
The US is giving $4bn (£2.85bn) to the Covax vaccination scheme, which aims to deliver more than two billion doses to people in 190 countries in less than a year.
“Unless and until everyone in the world is vaccinated, then no-one is really fully safe, because if the virus is out there and continuing to proliferate, it’s also going to be mutating,” Mr Blinken said.
“And if it’s mutating, it’s also going to come back and bite people everywhere.”
The US has now vaccinated more than 27 million of its own people. However, in many poorer countries, vaccination has yet to begin.
Mr Blinken also accused China of failing to share information that might shed light on the origins of the coronavirus.
A team of investigators from the World Health Organization (WHO) spent four weeks in China on a fact-finding mission at the beginning of 2021. However, two experts from the WHO team said afterwards that China refused to grant full access to the data they sought.
The secretary of state said a better health security system was needed to spot pandemics before they fully emerged.
“It requires countries to be transparent. It requires them to share information. It requires them to give access to international experts at the beginning of an outbreak – things that unfortunately we haven’t seen from China,” he said.
