World Bank to finance extra COVID jabs for poorer nations

Covax was set up to ensure 92 developing territories could access coronavirus vaccines to fight the pandemic, with the cost covered by donors.

The new mechanism will allow those countries to buy additional doses on top of the subsidised ones they will already receive via Covax.

Using money from the World Bank and other development banks, the facility says it will make advanced purchases from vaccine manufacturers based on aggregated demand across countries.

The financing mechanism builds on the existing Covax cost-sharing arrangement which aims to provide 430 million additional doses, or enough doses to fully vaccinate 250 million people, for delivery between late 2021 and mid-2022 for the 92 countries. Those doses could be purchased through new financing arrangement.

The WHO has raged against the staggering imbalance in global distribution of Covid-19 vaccine doses.

Nearly 3.9 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been injected around the world in at least 216 territories.

In high-income countries, as defined by the World Bank, 95.4 doses have been administered per 100 inhabitants.

That figure stands at just 1.5 doses per 100 people in the 29 lowest-income countries.

Covax has so far delivered more than 138 million vaccine doses to 136 participating territories — far short of the numbers it hoped. – NDTV