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In total, 156 countries, representing about 64% of the world’s population, have pledged to pool their resources to develop, buy and distribute two billion doses of a COVID-19 vaccine equally by the end of 2021.
“It’s not just the right thing to do, it’s the smartest thing,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, who co-directs the effort with the Coalition for Epidemic-Prepared Innovations (CEPI). and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance.
To date, 64 high-income countries have joined the effort, as well as 92 low- and middle-income countries, which could benefit from vaccine procurement. Gavi CEO Seth Berkley said at a WHO press conference on Monday that he expected 38 more countries to register in the coming days.
Some of the high-income countries already on board are Australia, Canada, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom and 27 Member States of the European Union. The list of 92 low- and middle-income countries includes the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, India, Mongolia, Ukraine and Vietnam. Together, countries will pool their resources for the progression of at least nine candidate vaccines that are already in the process, and then acquire doses after approval and regulatory approval for equitable distribution.
“This is not a charity, it is in the most productive interest of each and every country,” Dr. Tedros said at the press conference. “We sink or swim together. “
The giant global effort is expected to require at least $35 billion to have an effect on the pandemic; so far, it has only raised about $3 billion. Tedros asked Monday for an early $15 billion injection to continue the effort.
The United States is an absent country on the long list of participants. Trump’s management said earlier this month that he would not be enrolled in the program, called the COVID-19 Global Vaccine Access Center (COVAX), due to WHO involvement. President Trump said last May that he intended to withdraw the country from WHO, which experts temporarily described as “short-sighted” and “self-destructive. “
Russia and China are also absent from the list, which have already issued approvals for experimental vaccines and have begun distributing them before the end of clinical trials. China, for example, has already vaccinated tens of thousands of people.
The absence of such giant players makes COVAX’s good luck more precarious. In addition, some high-income countries, coupled with the United States, have negotiated individual agreements with vaccine developers to download millions of doses if a vaccine is good luck in trials. The agreements, which Tedros criticized as “vaccine nationalism,” can also simply decrease materials for global distribution. On the contrary, if the agreements do not result in doses, as in the most likely situation of individual vaccines failing in complex clinical trials, countries that having only bilateral agreements would possibly have difficulty accessing an effective vaccine. Instead, WHO warned that countries deserve to be able to conclude their own agreements while participating in the global effort.
Countries participating in COVAX will be guaranteed a percentage of a successful vaccine. In a recently published report, WHO explained how COVAX will distribute vaccines in two phases: the first phase aims to make the source country a source for 20% of its population, increasing vaccination of high-priority equipment, such as fitness workers, the elderly and others with underlying fitness disorders that increase their coVID-19 threat.
Since the materials will be limited at the beginning of the distribution of the vaccine, the first phase has an initial phase that aims at vaccine doses for only 3% of the country’s population, and those first doses are recommended to physical and social health workers number one. will continue to 20% of the country.
At this stage, phase two begins and countries will obtain materials to vaccinate the population beyond 20%; However, at this stage, country allocation can be strategically weighted to take into account local shipping and other vulnerabilities.
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