The COVAX international anticovid vaccine distribution program, which in its first year of operation brought one billion doses mainly to developing countries, today requested an additional $5.2 billion from the international community to continue its work in 2022.
The World Health Organization (WHO), the GAVI Vaccine Foundation and other institutions that support COVAX made this call in a virtual conference where They have also already announced initial commitments of more than 500 million dollars for this second year of operations and third year of the pandemic.
“In 2022 we can help end COVID by using these supports to ensure doses are used quickly and reach countries in the numbers they require,” said GAVI CEO Seth Berkley.
Among the first countries to commit are the Netherlands ($26 million), Ireland ($10 million), Finland ($5.9 million), Belgium ($9 million), and Spain, which has pledged 3.5 million euros to COVAX in 2022 (3.9 million dollars), among others.
The COVAX program estimates that with its distribution of vaccines this year it could save between 1 and 1.27 million lives, and reduce the economic cost of the pandemic in half in many of the beneficiary countries. Since the first vaccines distributed by COVAX arrived on January 24, 2021 (600,000 doses to the African nation of Ghana), the program has distributed its vaccines in 2021 to 144 countries and territories of the world, mainly to regions such as Africa, Latin America, South Asia and other developing areas.
The doses are distributed at low prices in middle-income nations, or are even financed by the international program itself in the case of the lowest-income economies (in the case of Latin America, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Bolivia fall into this category). and Haiti).
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