Leaders of the Asia-Pacific trade group Apec, including US President Joe Biden, Russia's Vladimir Putin, and China's Xi Jinping, pledged on Friday to work to expand sharing and manufacturing of Covid-19 vaccines to fight the global pandemic.

In a statement after a virtual meeting of the group chaired by New Zealand, the leaders, struggling to tame outbreaks that have been made worse by the Delta variant, said they would encourage the voluntary transfer of vaccine production technologies "on mutually agreed terms" as the region prepared for future health shocks...