Covax vaccine program cracks billion-dose mark

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The Covax international vaccine program hit the billion-dose mark in CoV vaccine deliveries Saturday. The milestone was announced by Gavi, the vaccination alliance of governments, companies, foundations and UN agencies that runs the Covax program. The one billionth dose was in a shipment that arrived in Rwanda yesterday, according to Gavi.

Covax now supplied 144 countries. The alliance mainly supplies poorer countries that don’t have the money to order the vaccines themselves. The program received more than ten billion dollars (8.74 billion euros) in donations.

Austria also participates in Covax. It donated 7.5 million euros to the initiative so far and also gave one million doses of the vaccine to Johnson&Johnson, which Austria did not call from its EU quota. The doses were distributed by the UNICEF children’s agency in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso and the Philippines.

Distribution very uneven
Gavi head Seth Berkley pointed out that vaccine distribution is still very uneven. Forty-one percent of the world’s population has not received a single dose of vaccine, he said. “We will redouble our efforts to end the imbalance,” he announced in Geneva. Covax, he said, is working to help countries with the infrastructure needed to get large vaccination programs up and running.

The goal of vaccinating 40 percent of the population in every country in the world by the end of 2021 had been missed in several dozen countries. Now, 70 percent of people in all countries are expected to be vaccinated by the middle of the year. But in many countries in Africa, barely 10 doses of vaccine have been administered per 100 people.

Covax was founded in 2020 to support CoV vaccination research. The original idea was that the program would distribute successful vaccines fairly around the world. However, rich countries made parallel separate contracts with vaccine manufacturers, buying up most of the production.

In addition, India, where large quantities of the AstraZeneca vaccine Covax ordered are manufactured, suddenly imposed an export ban because of the pandemic at home. As a result, Covax was able to procure and deliver little vaccine for a long time, despite having funds available.