COVAX Program

COVAX Program

West African country, Ghana became the first country to receive a shipment of coronavirus vaccines under the COVAX program. About 600,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII) in Pune (the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world), were sent to Accra in Ghana on February 23.

What is the COVAX program?

The COVAX program is led by the vaccine alliance GAVI, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) in partnership with UNICEF, vaccine manufacturers and the World Bank, among others.

What is the Aim of COVAX program?

The aim of COVAX program is to ensure equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines globally in what is being called the largest vaccine procurement and supply operation in history. The target of this program is to vaccinate roughly 20% of the population in the 92 Advance Market Commitment (AMC) countries. This includes middle and lower-income nations that cannot afford to pay for COVID-19 vaccines.

Which vaccines are included in COVAX program?

• Oxford-AstraZeneca became the first vaccine manufacturer to sign up under the programme in June 2020, and has guaranteed to supply 300 million doses.
• In January, COVAX announced that it had signed an agreement with Pfizer-BioNTech to purchase up to 40 million doses of their vaccine.
• In addition, the program has a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Johnson and Johnson for 500 million doses of their single-dose vaccine, which the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared to be safe and effective recently.
• COVAX also has existing agreements with SII for 200 million doses.

Significance of COVAX program

• COVAX is an effort to ensure that people in all corners of the world will get access to Covid-19 vaccines once they are available, regardless of their wealth.
• The program wants to vaccinate roughly 20 per cent of the population in the 92 Advance Market Commitment (AMC) countries, which include middle and lower-income nations that cannot afford to pay for COVID-19 vaccines.
• The funding target for this program for 2021 is about US $6.8 billion, of which it has raised about US $4 billion. The funding is partly coming from high and middle-income countries that will also receive a share of the vaccines produced for COVAX.
• The US has pledged to give US $2 billion to COVAX and make available further funding of US $2 billion over the course of the next two years.
• In 2021, the programme expects to vaccinate nearly 550 million, the equivalent of roughly 8.52 per cent of India’s population.