Vaccine group Gavi says additional $5.2 billion needed to ensure supply
Vaccine group Gavi says additional $5.2 bln needed to ensure supply
January 19, 2022; 9:50 AM EST
(Reuters) – The chairman of the Gavi vaccine alliance, Jose Manuel Barroso, said on Wednesday that an additional $5.2 billion is needed to continue to deliver vaccines at scale.
Speaking at a news briefing, Barroso said it was critical to continue to keep up the pace of vaccine supply through the COVAX global vaccine-sharing programme, as more than 3 billion people in the world have yet to receive their first dose.
A member of the National Guard looks on as a batch of AstraZeneca coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines, delivered under the COVAX scheme, is unloaded from a KLM Boeing 787 at Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City, Mexico May 27, 2021. REUTERS/Henny Romero/File Photo
Gavi Chief Executive Seth Berkley said there was a need to raise the additional funds in the next three months to establish a pandemic pool of a minimum 600 million additional doses, strengthen countries’ delivery systems, and finance ancillary costs for syringes and transport.
“If we achieve this goal, we believe that up to one and a quarter million deaths can be prevented in the next year alone… economic cost of the pandemic could be reduced.”
Last week, COVAX reached a milestone of delivering 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses.
Speaking at the same event, World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said scaling up the delivery capacity of COVAX is critical to meeting the U.N. agency’s target of vaccinating 70% of the population in poorer nations by mid-2022.
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