The global vaccine alliance Gavi has secured $4.8 billion in funding pledges for the vaccine-sharing scheme COVAX, an official said on Friday, falling just shy of its target.

The global project to share COVID-19 vaccines is struggling to place more than 300 million doses in the latest sign the problem with vaccinating the world is now more about demand than supply.

The chairman of the Gavi vaccine alliance, Jose Manuel Barroso, said on January 19 that an additional $5.2 billion is needed to continue to deliver vaccines at scale.

The COVAX global vaccine-sharing program has delivered 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses, one of the organizations which manages it said on January 15.

The World Health Organization (WHO) forecasts that people most vulnerable to Covid-19, such as the elderly, will need to get an annual vaccine booster to be protected against variants, an internal document seen by Reuters shows.

The Biden administration plans to donate 500 million Pfizer coronavirus vaccine doses to nearly 100 countries over the next two years, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on June 9.

COVAX

India’s export ban on Covid-19 shots risks dragging the battle against the pandemic “back to square one” unless wealthy nations step in to plug a gaping hole in the COVAX global vaccine-sharing scheme, health specialists said on May 20.

The global supply of Covid-19 vaccine is “incredibly tight” and the COVAX dose-sharing facility is unlikely to procure much more supply in 2021 than doses already reserved, the Gavi vaccine alliance ceo Seth Berkley said on April 15.

There is a “shocking imbalance” in the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines worldwide and most countries do not have anywhere near enough shots to cover health workers and others at high-risk, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on April 9.

The COVAX vaccine facility delivered nearly 38.4 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines to 102 countries and economies across six continents six weeks after it began to roll out supplies, according to a statement on April 8.