The United States will provide an initial $2 billion contribution to Gavi, a public-private vaccine alliance that supports access to safe and effective vaccines for 92 low- and middle-income economies, according to a White House news release.
An initial $2 billion will come from money appropriated by a bipartisan Congressional vote in December 2020. The U.S. will then provide an additional $2 billion through 2021 and 2022, of which the first $500 million will be made available when existing donor pledges are fulfilled and initial doses are delivered to lower-income countries, the White House said.
President Biden was expected to make the announcement at a G7 meeting. He will also call on G7 countries to bring in billions more in resources to support global COVID-19 vaccination, vaccine manufacturing and logistics, the White House said.
Separately, Novavax, the Gaithersburg, MD-based developer of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate, announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Gavi to provide 1.1 billion cumulative doses of NVX-CoV2373, the company’s recombinant protein-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The vaccine doses will be manufactured and distributed globally by Novavax and Serum Institute of India (SII), the latter under an existing agreement between Gavi and SII, according to a news release from Novavax.
NVX-CoV2373 is being studied in two ongoing Phase 3 clinical trials in the United States and Mexico, as well as in the United Kingdom (U.K.), for the prevention of COVID-19.
Gavi is working with COVAX, the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, which was launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to encourage the development, manufacture and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. It is co-led by Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi and the World Health Organization (WHO). They are working with vaccine manufacturers, UNICEF, the World Bank, and others to guarantee fair and equitable access to the vaccine for every country in the world.
