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Delivery of at least half of the doses pledged expected by the end of 2021
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G7 countries will add to vaccine efforts announced at G20 Summit and Global Vaccine Summit
Leaders of major industrial nations have pledged to share about 1 billion Covid vaccine doses with low-income countries at the G7 summit held in Cornwall, UK.
The G7 countries would be augmenting the efforts of G20 Global Health Summit that was held on May 21, 2021 in Rome and the GaviCovax AMC Summit that was hosted by the Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on June 4.
The G20 summit had emphasized support for “global sharing of safe, effective, quality and affordable vaccine doses including working with the ACT-A vaccines pillar (COVAX), when domestic situations permit”.
At the Global Vaccine Summit, Gavi launched the COVID-19 Vaccines Advance Market Commitment (COVAX AMC) as the first building block of the COVAX Facility. The Gavi COVAX AMC is the innovative financing instrument that will support the participation of 92 low- and middle-income economies in the COVAX Facility – enabling access to donor-funded doses of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines.
The AMC, combined with additional support for country readiness and delivery, will make sure the most vulnerable in all countries can be protected in the short term, regardless of income level.
At the G7 summit, the countries committed to sharing at least 870 million doses of the vaccines directly. The aim is to deliver at least half of the vaccines by the end of 2021.
They reaffirmed their support for Covax as “the primary route for providing vaccines to the poorest countries.”
Covax, the vaccines pillar of the Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) accelerator, is co-convened by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance Gavi, and the World Health Organization (WHO) – working in partnership with Unicef as key implementing partner, developed and developing country vaccine manufacturers, the World Bank, and others.
It is the only global initiative that is working with governments and manufacturers to ensure Covid-19 vaccines are available worldwide to both higher-income and lower-income countries.
Covax partners welcomed this G7 commitment, along with continued support for exporting in significant proportions, promotion of voluntary licensing and not-for-profit global production.
“This is an important moment of global solidarity and a critical milestone in the push to ensure those most at risk, everywhere are protected,” said Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi).
Covax looks forward to seeing doses flowing to countries as soon as possible, according to WHO.
Facing an urgent supply gap, Covax is focused on securing as many shared doses as possible immediately, as the third quarter of this year is when the gap between deliveries and countries’ ability to absorb doses will be greatest, it stated.
Covax will work with the G7 and other countries that have stepped up to share doses as rapidly and equitably as possible. This will help address short-term supply constraints currently impacting the global response to Covid-19 and minimize the prospect of future deadly variants, it added.
In anticipation of the large volumes available through the COVAX Facility deals portfolio later in the year, Covax also urges multilateral development banks to urgently release funding to help countries prepare their health systems for a large-scale rollout of vaccines in the coming months.
Henrietta Fore, the Executive Director of Unicef, said: “We have reached a grim milestone in this pandemic: There are already more dead from Covid-19 in 2021 than in all of last year. Without urgent action, this devastation will continue.”