The World Health Organization and key partners unveiled a plan Friday to purchase 2 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines for the highest risk populations of the world.
The plan anticipates that by the end of 2021, the doses could be delivered to countries to vaccinate high risk individuals, likely including health care workers, people over the age of 65, and other adults who suffer from conditions like diabetes.
The WHO and its partners — the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — estimate it will cost $18.1 billion to deliver on the plan. The effort is one pillar of the WHO’s effort to ensure all countries have access to Covid-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics, called the ACT Accelerator, short for Access to Covid-19 Tools.
In addition to the funding — $11.3 billion of which must be raised in the next six months — the project would also need commitments from high- and upper-middle income countries to purchase up to 950 million doses of vaccine.
Countries will be offered “shares” of the nine candidate vaccines that CEPI is supporting, as well as other vaccines the consortium may end up purchasing. The idea is that because it is not known which vaccines will be successful, purchasing shares in a pool — to be called the Covax facility — will broaden a country’s chances of having access to vaccines. It is expected that charitable donors will help support shares for low- and middle-income countries.
Individual countries that can afford to do so are negotiating advance direct purchase agreements with various manufacturers — and are even helping to pay upfront for the cost of making vaccine before it has been shown to be effective. But should a country make a big investment in one vaccine, only to see it fail, it could find itself with limited alternatives in the early days of vaccine availability, when demand will be huge and supply scarce.
“It’s risky for them to do that and it’s also not ethically the right approach, because it leaves the rest of the world without vaccine doses,” said Soumya Swaminathan, WHO’s chief scientist.
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That risk is real. Vaccines are difficult to make and historically more vaccine projects fail than succeed. Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, said about 7% of vaccines make it through preclinical development, and maybe 15% to 20% that enter the clinic are successful.
“The vast majority will fail, but by having a large portfolio this will move forward,” Berkley said. He noted the facility has signed a memorandum of understanding for 300 million doses with AstraZeneca, which is partnering with Oxford University on a vaccine that has already begun a Phase 3 clinical trial.
Richard Hatchett, CEPI’s chief executive officer, said production support of a number of vaccine candidates gives Covax a right of first refusal to vaccine doses where the program has provided financial support for the manufacturing of the vaccine.
“The advantage of the facility is that it is the ‘first customer in line’ for those projects where access agreements exist but it can also go out to the market and buy any vaccine. And the large volume guarantees will be very attractive to companies,” Hatchett said.
According to the WHO, there are currently 16 Covid-19 vaccines in clinical trials already, and at least another 125 in earlier stages of development.
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There is a virus that is spread all over the world, kills some 24 thousand and more people day by day on this planet. this virus is called hunger, the disease is starvation. So, if all Philanthropists and Industries are so impressed to help and care of the world population health, why do they not help here. We do not need vaccines, we need food and education for billions of people. And, as much as I know, we need no laboratories and billions to invent food. But this will cost money and makes no profit, at least not right away. On the end, why can they not leave people live their life in freedom and the way they want. None of them asks anything to them, except food.
Shem – I do not really understand your post, but you say at the end “why can they not leave people live their life in freedom and the way they want. None of them ask anything to them, except food”
The food we have in the US does not come from people living in freedom or doing what they want. The rich countries make their people do a lot of work and obey many, many, many rules – if everyone was free, the country would not be rich – just the opposite.
Also, the vaccine is cheap compared to feeding everyone -and, unlike the disease, hunger is not solved by feeding everyone – well, it is solved today .
I do not want to hear complaints from poor countries any longer- if they want to not be poor, it is not really that hard – adopt the rules of rich countries – or more, countries which became rich – if everyone acted Chinese, most every poor country could become much richer – one child – right, only one – no one gets married until they are in their 20s and got their education, at least – less time with family and friends, more work – and so on and so on.
They have been trying to find a vaccine for any coronavirus for 30 years to no avail. I don’t see why they will now. There was one that produced a good immune response, but people died pretty much when exposed to the wild virus. They had to hush that one up. I will be in no hurry whatsoever to receive any jabs that will make so many drug companies so rich. The profit motive will compromise safety for sure with this one!