Covax had to renegotiate contracts with four vaccine suppliers, to reduce 400 to 600 million doses. Four hundred million doses from Pfizer provided as donations from the US government were converted into future options available in 2023.
“We’re not buying too much,” said Dr. Berkley, adding that he expected the need for countries to continue to try to provide a basic dose or a booster dose to be largely adequate. compatible with the available dose of Gavi.
“During a pandemic, I’d rather make the mistake of buying too much, than the mistake of not having enough, especially when countries feel that there aren’t enough doses in the first place.” he say. “If you want the dose in the first place, you have to go ahead and order it, even if you don’t know if they’ll work, and that’s risky. You have to take the risk.”
The Gavi Secretariat is proposing to the board members that the organization keep a $1.8 billion fund to enable the purchase of new on-demand doses by 2025 and support the provision of Vaccine.
Dr Berkley said the “pandemic preparedness team” is meant to act as insurance for another situation where Gavi needs to buy a vaccine for developing countries (for example against a new variant of the virus). of Covid) and forced to compete with the deep pockets of richer nations.
Some board members expressed concern about the idea of the institution sitting on these funds.
One board member said: “We just want to make sure this money goes unused until we have more discussion about where we want those funds to go. “We have no control at the moment on how to manage that fund. Crucially, we don’t want them to use these funds to expand their mission.”
Dr. Orin Levine, an epidemiologist who represents the Gates Foundation on the Gavi board until September 2021, said Covax’s fate was decided by mid-2021. “It’s zero. about the dose provided in that period, which is close to zero, is one man who says: “We cannot get any rich country to slow down their individual vaccination orders to help others. begin their first shots.”
