COVAX: A Global Collaboration for Equitable Access to COVID-19 Vaccines, Monografías, Ensayos de Inmunología

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COVAX,

the act-accelerator

vaccines pillar

Insuring accelerated vaccine

development and manufacture

Developing a vaccine against COVID-19 is the most pressing challenge of our time. The global pandemic has already caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and disrupted the lives of billions more. As well as reducing the tragic loss of life, introduction of a vaccine will prevent the loss $375 B^1 to the global economy every month.

Developing one or more safe and effective vaccines is also one of the most complex challenges of our time. Unlike with past vaccine development, scaling up manufacturing and completion of human trials for vaccine candidates must be done in parallel. Even with accelerated investment in manufacturing, and the completion of trials to ensure vaccine candidates are safe and effective, there is no scenario in which supply over the next 18 months will exceed demand although at today’s anticipated trajectory some vaccine candidates could become available within this time frame.

Governments are answerable to their populations and to their taxpayers, and with so many lives and livelihoods at stake some are understandably pursuing bilateral deals with manufacturers to secure access to scarce future vaccine supplies. As treasuries around the world seek to address unprecedented revenue shocks, such strategies bring hope and instill confidence. But they also bring risk. In normal times, vaccine development is long, complicated, and more often than not ends in failure; it is difficult to know which deals will actually result in getting any vaccine.

Many leaders have called for a global solution to address a global issue and for a shared endeavor

(^1) IMF estimates, published on April 14 https://blogs.imf.org/2020/04/14/the-great-lockdown-worst-economic- downturn-since-the-great-depression/

that involves the best shared science to resolve in the shortest possible time a pandemic involving every region and territory on the planet. The COVAX Pillar provides this solution: through portfolio diversification, pooling of financial and scientific resources, and economies of scale, participating governments and blocs can hedge the risk of backing unsuccessful candidates just as governments with limited or no ability to finance their own bilateral procurement can be assured access to life-saving vaccines that would otherwise have been beyond their reach.

The goal of the COVAX Pillar is to end the acute phase of the global pandemic by the end of 2021. If it succeeds in this goal, through the appropriate allocation of safe and effective doses of vaccines in phases determined by epidemiology and public health to slow and ultimately to stop the pandemic, it could save millions of lives and transform the economic prospects of governments and individuals.

The COVAX Pillar is an urgently needed approach to getting a safe and effective vaccine faster, through financing that shares the risks of development and creates the capacity for manufacturing vaccine doses now, in parallel with clinical development, and before they are shown to work. It will show how participating countries, by buying into a share of many vaccine candidates instead of just a few, will be able to insure themselves against the failure of any individual candidate and secure successful vaccines in a cost-effective, targeted way.

Introduction

COVAX: The Act-Accelerator

vaccines pillar

The ACT-Accelerator is a global collaboration to accelerate the development, production and equitable access to new COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines. It is a partnership of key stakeholders – political leaders, public and private sector partners, civil society, academia – that leverages each partner’s strengths to drive towards accelerated and equitable access.

Within the ACT-Accelerator, COVAX, the vaccines pillar, is driving the work on vaccine development, manufacturing, procurement and delivery at scale, as well as policy and allocation, bringing it together into the type of agreement described above. It leverages the expertise of existing organisations (CEPI, Gavi and WHO) and industry partners in a new way to meet the challenge of a pandemic.

The COVAX Pillar also ensures that the required additional activities for the successful launch of vaccine are supported in parallel – including detailed demand and supply scenarios, the regulatory dialogue to avoid time lags, the setup of an allocation framework and mechanism and supporting the buildup of infrastructure and health systems preparedness.

A fully financed COVAX pillar could give all participating governments a guaranteed share of any future successful vaccine production.

The COVAX pillar will simultaneously address both pull financing (advance market commitments), and push financing (at-risk investments for R&D, manufacturing capacity reservation & inventory), and agree to do so now to drive investment at high speed, volume, and ‘at risk’, and to secure manufacturing inventory build-up and future supply. By combining the power and expertise of CEPI’s R&D role on the push side with Gavi’s

procurement and allocation function on the pull side, the COVAX pillar is able to ensure the manufacturing of doses now, something neither organisation, government or financier could achieve entirely on its own. Supported by the World Health Organization in assuring effective regulation and optimal allocation, both CEPI and Gavi will use the depth and breadth of their partnerships with governments, private sector, academia, civil society, and financiers to achieve the accelerated impact the world needs from the COVAX pillar.

Why we need to act now

Mitigate economic damage – for every month that this pandemic continues, $375 billion[1 is lost from the global economy. Acting now to accelerate development, manufacture, and distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine will save hundreds of thousands of lives and protect the livelihoods of millions more.

Accelerate availability of vaccine – if we follow the traditional course of vaccine development, we could face years of delay. Such a delay will cost lives and trillions of dollars in economic damage. COVAX will enable at-risk investments in production capacity across several candidates now – to ensure that, upon regulatory approval, doses can be made immediately available at scale.

Ensure globally fair allocation and access for low and middle income countries (LMIC) – nobody is safe from COVID-19 until everybody is safe. COVAX not only represents the best solution to end this pandemic, it is also the fairest way to allocate vaccine for all countries to ensure that access can be provided for every country.

The COVID-19 vaccine global

access (COVAX) facility

When sufficiently capitalized, the COVAX pillar will immediately offer advance purchase agreements to vaccine candidates meeting technical threshold criteria. This will be done to produce vaccines at risk before we have results of efficacy trials. Offering between five to ten such contracts will allow a specially created financial instrument, the COVAX Facility, which sits within the pillar, to:

procure cumulative 2 billion doses by end 2021, ensuring that participating countries receive allocations of vaccine as quickly as possible including an emergency buffer (10% of doses)

procure the highest possible volume of vaccine from each manufacturer, resulting in the greatest number of doses at the most economically efficient price

provide for globally fair and equitable allocation of vaccine, saving millions of lives, and protecting millions more livelihoods, and bringing the acute phase of the pandemic to an end in the most efficient fashion possible.

Initial capitalization would provide an equitable distribution of doses and begin to dent the epidemic in participating countries. The COVAX pillar is for all countries. It will include a fair and equitable allocation of limited supplies on the basis of ethical values and public health goals. Criteria will include population groups with higher risk of mortality, burden of disease, threat, vulnerability, product supply and logistics, country context, and global health security priorities. As further scale-up of production occurs, and the market is considered orderly, countries will have continued allocation of doses as needed, or could revert to bilateral deals where that makes sense for them to do so.