World leaders commit $4.3 billion to increase global access to Covid-19 treatments

World leaders have committed over $4.3 billion to the Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator to help increase global access to Covid-19 tests, treatments and vaccines.

The collective funding was announced at the Virtual G7 leaders meeting, hosted by UK prime minister Boris Johnson. The G7 leaders committed to working alongside the World Health Organisation to increase and accelerate global vaccine development and deployment; increase manufacturing capacity through voluntary licensing and improved information sharing; and also promote vaccine confidence.

The US committed $2 billion of funding to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance for the Covax Advance Market Commitment (AMC), which has been developed to ensure that Covid-19 vaccine doses are equitably distributed around the world. The US also committed a further $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 AMC countries.

Germany pledged $1.8 billion to help contribute the ACT Accelerator’s access to tests, treatments and vaccines.

Other donations come from the European Commission, which pledged $363 million for the Covax AMC, Japan, which pledged $79 million and Canada, which committed $59 million.

The European Investment Bank is providing a further $242 million in loan guarantees which will help the ACT Accelerator partnership to frontload future payments to speed up the response.

Speaking at the event, UK prime minister Boris Johnson said that the UK will share its surplus Covid-19 vaccine doses with developing countries, to help increase the volume of available vaccines around the world.

The ACT Accelerator has a total funding requirement of $38.1 billion for 2020-2021. This is in order to meet targets it has set out, including the distribution of 2 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses to developing countries, alongside the delivering of vital supplies such as medical oxygen, diagnostic tests and Covid-19 treatments such as dexamethasone. The donations made to the ACT Accelerator have reduced the funding gap to $22.9 billion, but work is still needed to support the partnership’s goals.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, said: “I thank the US, Germany, the European Commission, the European Investment Bank, Japan, and Canada for their significant funding commitments. Today’s news shows us solidarity prevails; we can turn a corner on this pandemic by funding the only global solution to end it. History will judge us collectively and I welcome the words of support from today’s G7 Leaders and the Munich Security Council for again highlighting to the world that we have to solve this together.”

Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, added: “This support for the Gavi COVAX AMC shows great commitment to equitable, global access to Covid-19 vaccines and is a major boost to our efforts to end the acute phase of the pandemic. We thank G7 countries, and particularly Germany and the United States, as well as the EU, for this strong leadership in the fields of global health and global health security.”