The Ates Foundation and the British biomedical charity Wellcome pledged $ 150 million each on Tuesday to fight the virus. Covid-19 and prevention of future pandemics.
The $ 300 million goes to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a global association founded and led five years ago Covax, the initiative to distribute covid vaccines in the developing world, together with the World Health Organization and Gavi, the Alliance for Vaccination.
“None of us believe it Omicron it will be the last variant, or that Covid-19 will be the last pandemic, ”British scientist Jeremy Farrar, director of Wellcome, said at a press conference.
“We need a truly global response,” he added, urging governments to increase their contributions.
The announced investment represents only a small fraction of CEPI’s new five-year action plan, which requires $ 3.5 billion.
A conference to be held next March London should help to collect the sum set as a goal.
The CEPI coalition, formed in 2017 following the Ebola epidemic, contributed to the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
It provided funding for 14 vaccine projects, including those for AstraZeneca, Modern Y Novavax.
“Those vaccines made a huge difference, saved many lives and came out very quickly,” Bill Gates, co-founder of the vaccine, told reporters. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
But the picture is mixed, he added, and “we are not getting to the numbers in developing countries as fast as we would like.”
One of CEPI’s key objectives is to dramatically reduce the time it takes to save life-saving vaccines against any new viral threat within 100 days of pathogen sequencing.
“Delivering vaccines within 11 months as we did in 2020 is unprecedented. But it was certainly not good enough,” said Richard Hatchett, executive director of CEPI.
“The unprecedented spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant around the world over the past two months is an example of the ways in which we need to be prepared, both in terms of the speed and extent of our response, to respond to future threats. , “it added.
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Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx