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Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative, announced the administration’s position on Wednesday afternoon as the pandemic continued to spiral in India and South America.

“This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures,” she said in a statement. “The administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for Covid-19 vaccines.”

Any proposal on waiving patents would require unanimous approval by W.T.O. members, so European Union support is necessary. But even if the proposal passes, it could make little difference to vaccine availability in the short run.

Eighty-three percent of shots that have been administered worldwide have been in high- and upper-middle-income countries. Just 0.2 percent of doses have been administered in low-income countries. In North America, 48 out of 100 adults have received at least one dose of a vaccine; the figure is 31 per 100 adults in Europe. In Africa, it is 1.3, according to figures compiled by Our World in Data.

Ms. von der Leyen on Thursday once again stated the European Union’s belief that “no one is safe until everyone is safe” in the fight against the pandemic.

That notion, she said, was as true for the continent of Europe as it was for the world. She said she could not imagine what it would have meant if some countries in the European Union secured vaccines while others went without.

“Economically it would have made no sense whatsoever with such an integrated single market,” she said. “And politically it would have torn our union apart.”