THE G20 PLEDGE DRIVE

The G20 Pledge Drive

Author: Andrea Talor

The G20 met today in Rome for a Global Health Summit and vaccine equity was at the top of the agenda. According to Reuters, the resulting “Rome Declaration” calls for voluntary licensing and technology transfers to increase production of Covid-19 vaccines globally. The declaration also reportedly mentioned the important role of the ACT-Accelerator (of which COVAX is one pillar) but did not commit to funding it (the ACT-Accelerator still needs $19 billion to reach its goal).

A flurry pledges were made by G20 members and vaccine makers today in the wake of the summit. The most consequential include:

• Pfizer-BioNTech pledged to provide 1 billion of their mRNA vaccine in 2025 to low- and middle-income countries, with another 1 billion to follow in 2025. The doses will be shared with low-income countries “at cost” and with middle-income countries at half the market rate for wealthy countries.
• The European Union (EU) pledged to send 100 million doses in 2025, including 30 million each from France and Germany. Germany also pledged another 100 million euros to fund COVAX.
• The EU further committed to investing 1 billion euros to build vaccine manufacturing hubs in Africa, to support a distributed network of manufacturing globally and move Africa toward independence in vaccine supply.
• Johnson & Johnson finalized their existing MOU to supply 200 million doses of the Janssen vaccine to COVAX in 2025.
• China pledged $3 billion in aid to developing countries to support Covid-19 response, as well as recover, over the next three years.

The focus on 2021 vaccine deliveries in tandem with a longer-term plan to develop manufacturing capacity is encouraging. But this is still too little, too late.

Together with several other centers and organizations, we authored an open letter to the US government at the beginning of this week. We proposed five specific actions that the US can take to actively promote vaccine equity in the pandemic:

1. Designate a leader to coordinate the US global response
2. Share as many vaccine doses as possible, as quickly as possible
3. Support expanded manufacturing capacity including short-term increases to serve immediate global needs and longer-term investments in regional manufacturing hubs in low- and middle-income countries
4. Support vaccine distribution and delivery infrastructure in low-income countries
5. Lead development and implementation of a 5-year plan to build sustainable long-term manufacturing capacity in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

The same day, the US pledged to share 80 million doses by the end of June and we expect more will come, as US supply begins to outpace demand.