COVAX

COVAX

Subject – IR

Context – COVID­19 vaccine export to resume

Concept –

• COVAX stands for COVID­19 Vaccines Global Access.
• COVAX is co-led by Gavi, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the World Health Organization.

Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI)

• The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is a foundation that takes donations from public, private, philanthropic, and civil society organisations, to finance independent research projects to develop vaccines against emerging infectious diseases (EID).
• CEPI is focused on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) “blueprint priority diseases”, which include: the Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV), the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the Nipah virus, the Lassa fever virus, and the Rift Valley fever virus, as well as the Chikungunya virus and the hypothetical, unknown pathogen “Disease X”.
• CEPI investment also requires “equitable access” to the vaccines during outbreaks, although subsequent CEPI policy changes may have compromised this criterion.
• CEPI was conceived in 2015 and formally launched in 2017 at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.
• It was co-founded and co-funded with US$460 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and a consortium of nations composed of India, Germany, Japan and Norway, which the European Union (2019) and United Kingdom (2020) subsequently joined.
• CEPI is headquartered in Oslo, Norway.

GAVI

• GAVI, officially Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance is a public–private global health partnership with the goal of increasing access to immunization in poor countries.
• It was created in 2000.
• GAVI facilitates vaccinations in developing countries by working with donor governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank, the vaccine industry in both industrialised and developing countries, research and technical agencies, civil society, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other private philanthropists.
• GAVI has observer status at the World Health Assembly.
• India is a Gavi beneficiary and will, therefore, receive a certain proportion of the vaccines from the COVAX facility.
• In 2019, the Gavi Board approved a new five-year strategy (‘Gavi 5.0’) with a vision to ‘leave no-one behind with immunisation’ and a mission to save lives and protect people’s health by increasing equitable and sustainable use of vaccines.

To know about COVAX, please click here.

To know about Vaccine Maitri, please click here.