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 An extra $50 million will go to the COVAX Advance Market Commitment
(AMC) led by the GAVI vaccine alliance, the foundation said, and
another $20 million to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness
Innovations (CEPI) which is co-funding development of several
COVID-19 vaccine candidates.
"We have to ensure that everyone gets equal access to tests, drugs,
and vaccines when they are available - no matter where you live in
the world," the foundation's co-chair Melinda Gates said in a
statement. "Our pledge today... means we are getting closer to
having the resources needed to help the world fight this virus."
Along with the World Health Organization, CEPI and GAVI are
co-leading a global scheme known as the Access to COVID-19 Tools
(ACT) Accelerator which aims to speed up development, production and
fair access to COVID-19 drugs, tests and vaccines.
GAVI has said the COVAX facility, which is part of the scheme, aims
to have secured 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of
2021. It says doses will be made available to people in all COVAX
participating countries, with almost a billion doses available to
the 92 poorest countries through the Advanced Market Commitment (AMC).
Preliminary positive data this week from trials of two potential
COVID-19 shots - one from Pfizer and BioNtech and one developed in
Russia - are encouraging signs that the first vaccines against the
pandemic disease may be ready to be deployed before the end of 2020.
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Mark Suzman, the Gates Foundation's chief executive officer, told reporters in
an online briefing that this was "an auspicious week" to be adding to global
funding efforts.
The vaccine news "makes us hopeful about a number of the other vaccine products
in the pipeline," he said. "But there's still a long way to go between that and
getting vaccines approved (by regulators), and then into people who need them at
the scale and with the kind of equitable global distribution we really need to
bring the virus under control."
The Gates Foundation began pledging funds for the vaccines AMC in June, and the
extra $50 million brings its total pledges to $156 million. The new funds will
also unlock an extra 12.5 million pounds ($16.5 mln) from Britain, which had
promised to part-match other contributions.
($1 = 0.7571 pounds)
(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
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