Gavi Receives $4.8 Bn In Funding Pledges For Covax
The global vaccine alliance Gavi has secured 4.8 billion dollars in funding pledges for the vaccine-sharing scheme Covax, an official said on Friday, falling just shy of its target.
"It is really putting us in a very comfortable position," said Marie-Ange Saraka-Yao, MD for resource mobilisation at Gavi.
The group had previously said it needed an additional 5.2 billion dollars to continue delivering vaccines at scale as part of its global plan that delivers shots to poorer countries.
Saraka-Yao said 2.1 billion dollars of the total had come from innovative finance instruments, 1.7 billion dollars from sovereign pledges from individual countries, and 1 billion dollars from multilateral development banks.
Covax has delivered 1.42 billion doses to 145 countries. Scaling up deliveries through Covax is seen as critical to meeting a WHO target to vaccinate 70 per cent of the population in poorer nations by mid-2022.
Gavi CEO Seth Berkley said the program had enough vaccines and the main challenge was to help countries increase their storage and distribution capacity. "That's something we're working on hard now. And that's where this critical infusion of capital will make a big difference," he said.
(Reuters)
