five countries along the Mekong River: Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam over concerns with China's influence on vaccine production and distribution in Asia. Russia Russia, the first country to claim a COVID-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, says twenty countries "including Brazil, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates" have requested access. Turkey Turkey has sent or donated CoronaVac vaccines to Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Cyprus, and North Macedonia. United States During the Trump Administration, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said the United States will share a vaccine with other countries only after the United States' needs have been met. The United States has funded and placed multi-billion dollar orders purchasing hundreds of millions of vaccines from the United Kingdom's AstraZeneca and Germany's BioNTech SE in collaboration with American Pfizer. The United States offered vaccine development to Indonesia in an August 2020 phone call between Mike Pompeo and Retno Marsudi. The Biden Administration has promised to finance vaccine manufacturing in various nations with its announcement in the Quad Summit held in March 2021 that it will provide supply of up to one billion coronavirus vaccines across Asia by the end of 2022 along with India, Australia and Japan. The United States vaccine export policies have been criticised as "Vaccine Apartheid" by The Independent. European Union UK-based AstraZeneca was accused of prioritizing the UK market and when their EU vaccine production lagged behind the UK. Diplomatic protests from the Irish and UK sides resolved the matter and the threat was withdrawn. In March 2021, the EU planned to suspend vaccine exports once again in order to incentivize the UK to export its domestic vaccine production. Vaccine nationalism This led to fears about vaccine nationalism, where developed countries would benefit in producing home-grown vaccine and poorer countries would not get access to the vaccine as soon, ultimately prolonging the pandemic. A similar phenomenon was observed during the H1N1 Flu and Ebola crisis. During the pandemic situation, there is a "diplomatic race ... for potential vaccines." Another concern has been that wealthier countries would gain prioritized access to vaccines based on their ability to pay. The COVAX program was established with the intention of counteracting this development. In 2021, an unequal distribution of vaccines based on the principle of vaccine nationalism was observed between high, middle, and low income countries. An August 2021 study concluded that this behavior has resulted in