Additional $5.2 billion needed to ensure vaccine supply

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 program, as more than 3 billion people in the world have yet to receive their first dose.

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 of 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... the 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 UN's target of vaccinating 70% of the population in poorer nations by mid-2022.
Dhaka Tribune