The international system Covax, which provides anti-Covid vaccines to poor countries, said on Wednesday it needed 5.2 billion dollars within three months to finance serum doses for 2022.
Covax celebrated the delivery of its billionth dose last weekend, after nearly a year of operations and a marked boost in November and December 2021.
“In 2022, we can help stop Covid by adapting our way of doing things by ensuring doses are used quickly, injected safely and meet country preferences and coverage goals,” said Seth Berkley, the head of the Vaccine Alliance which is one of the pillars of Covax with the WHO, Unicef and CEPI.
“This will help the world reduce pandemic risks and uncertainties,” he said in an appeal to donors.
Covax needs $3.7 billion to finance a reserve of 600 million doses, which must ensure a smooth supply and be able to deal with unforeseen events such as booster doses or vaccines adapted to new variants. .
Another billion is intended to help poor countries to prepare and distribute vaccines to avoid wastage.
Finally, 545 million dollars must be used to cover costs such as transport, syringes or insurance.
So far, Covax has received $192 million from donors.
Seth Berkley hopes the next billion doses will be delivered in four or five months rather than the year it took for the first billion, when supply issues severely hampered operations.
Covax, which estimates it can save a million lives in 2022 and halve the economic cost of the pandemic in some countries, says it has access to enough doses to vaccinate around 45% of the population of the 92 countries that benefit from vaccine donations. .
But 25 of these countries do not have the infrastructure for an effective vaccination campaign.
WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has once again denounced vaccine inequity, saying that although 10 billion doses of Covid vaccines have been administered so far, almost half of the world’s population was not vaccinated.
He pointed out that it was this inequity that facilitated the emergence of variants like Omicron and warned that “the next one might just be worse.”
“In 2022, we can either end the acute phase of the pandemic or prolong it. World leaders have a choice,” he added.