Covid-19 vaccine: COVAX announces new agreement, plans for fast deliveries

COVAX, a global initiative to ensure rapid and equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines for all countries yesterday announced the signing of an advance purchase agreement with Pfizer for up to 40 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which has already received WHO emergency use listing.

The rollout will start with the successful negotiation and execution of supply agreements, said the World Health Organization (WHO).

In further support of its mission to expedite early availability of vaccines to lower-income countries and help bring a rapid end to the acute stage of the Covid-19 pandemic, COVAX also confirmed yesterday that it will exercise an option -- via an existing agreement with Serum Institute of India (SII) -- to receive its first 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University-developed vaccine manufactured by SII.

COVAX anticipates that, via an existing agreement with AstraZeneca, at least 50 million further doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine will be available for delivery to COVAX participants in Q1 of 2021.

"Today marks another milestone for COVAX, we anticipate being able to begin deliveries of life-saving Covid-19 vaccines by the end of February," said Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which leads COVAX procurement and delivery.