New Delhi (NVI): More than 75 countries have shown interest in joining the COVAX facility by the World Health Organisation (WHO), meant to provide global access to a Covid-19 vaccine, the global health body has said.
These 75 countries would finance the vaccines from their own public finance budgets while partnering to support 90 lower-income through voluntary donations to the Gavi’s COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC), according to the WHO report.
“Together, this group of up to 165 countries represents more than 60 per cent of the world’s population. Among the group are representatives from every continent and more than half of the world’s G20 economies,” WHO said.
The COVAX initiative is co-led by Gavi, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and WHO, working in partnership with developed and developing country vaccine manufacturers.
The initiative is meant to help accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines, and to guarantee fair and equitable access for every country in the world.
“COVAX is the only truly global solution to the COVID-19 pandemic. For the vast majority of countries, whether they can afford to pay for their own doses or require assistance, it means receiving a guaranteed share of doses and avoiding being pushed to the back of the queue, as we saw during the H1N1 pandemic a decade ago,” said Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
“Even for those countries that are able to secure their own agreements with vaccine manufacturers, this mechanism represents, through its world-leading portfolio of vaccine candidates, a means of reducing the risks associated with individual candidates failing to show efficacy or gain licensure,” he said.
The COVAX Facility forms a key part of the COVAX pillar (COVAX) of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, a ground-breaking global collaboration to accelerate the development, production, and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines.
The WHO said that the COVAX facility would also maintain a buffer of doses for emergency and humanitarian use, including dealing with severe outbreaks before they spiral out of control.
“Through COVAX our aspiration is to be able to vaccinate the most vulnerable 20 per cent of the population of every country that participates, regardless of income level, by the end of 2021. Ensuring fair access is not only a matter of equity; it is the fastest way to end this pandemic,” said Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI.
By the end of 2021, the goal of COVAX is to deliver 2-billion doses of safe, effective Covid-19 vaccines that have passed regulatory approval and or WHO pre-qualification.
These Covid-19 vaccines will be delivered to all participating countries, proportional to their populations, initially prioritising healthcare workers. The initiative will then be expanding to cover 20 per cent of the population of participating countries, said the WHO report.
“Further doses will then be made available based on country need, vulnerability and Covid-19 threat,” report said.
The WHO report further stated, COVAX will now begin a process of consultation with all 165 the countries. The countries that have expressed interest to finance the initiative will have to commit to purchase the vaccine doses with upfront payment by August end to secure involvement in the COVAX facility.
Significant progress has been achieved by the COVAX partners to date, with seven of the nine candidate vaccines supported by CEPI already in clinical trials.
Gavi also said that it had raised USD 600 million against an initial target of USD 2 billion from private donors under the COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC). Also, the AMC aims at incentivising vaccine manufacturers and helping them produce sufficient quantities of approved Covid-19 vaccines to ensure access for developing countries.
Additionally, WHO has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with AstraZeneca also commits them to supply 300 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to COVAX, as per the reports.
-RJV/ARK
