Company Welcomes Leadership Shown by the European Commission and EU Member States, plus Norway and Iceland to Help Advance Equitable Access to Our Vaccine
Johnson & Johnson (the Company) welcomes the decision of EU Member States along with Norway and Iceland (Team Europe) to donate almost 100 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine through the COVAX Facility. As a practical rapid response to the urgent need to scale up equitable access to vaccines, these doses will be utilized to help protect individuals in lower-income countries.
Supported by the European Commission, Team Europe are providing these doses under an agreement signed recently by the Government of Belgium (acting on behalf of Team Europe), Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) and Johnson & Johnson. The agreement will enable doses of the Company’s vaccine to be shipped directly to COVAX for the benefit of low- and middle-income countries through the remainder of this year and into early 2022.
“We welcome the leadership shown by the European Commission and Team Europe in transferring these doses to accelerate COVID-19 vaccination in lower income countries and to help address the global vaccine equity challenge,” said Paul Stoffels, M.D., Vice Chairman of the Executive Committee and Chief Scientific Officer. “We will continue to support governments that have doses of our vaccine to share, particularly through the COVAX Facility as we believe that it is an essential mechanism to help combat the pandemic globally.”
At a time when only 4.7 percent[1] of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, a global effort is needed to support the WHO’s goals of reaching 40 percent global vaccine coverage by the end of this year, and 70 percent of people everywhere by mid-2022.[2]
Recipient countries are determined by Gavi, who together with Alliance partners UNICEF and WHO, will work alongside receiving governments on country readiness and the transfer of these doses. The Company will provide certain supply chain and logistical support to ensure donated vaccines can be delivered to recipient countries as quickly as possible, and we are proud to be working with governments and Gavi to make this happen. First shipments of doses will begin arriving in a number of African countries this week.
The Company has committed to providing its vaccine on a not-for-profit basis globally for emergency pandemic use and is making available up to 500 million doses of its vaccine to the COVAX Facility through 2022. This is in addition to donations by the EU and others of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
About COVAX [3]
COVAX, the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, is co-led by CEPI, Gavi and WHO – working in partnership with developed and developing country vaccine manufacturers, UNICEF, PAHO, the World Bank, and others. It is the only global initiative that is working with governments and manufacturers to ensure COVID-19 vaccines are available worldwide to both high-income and lower-income countries.
Since April 2020, the ACT-Accelerator cooperation, launched by WHO and mates, has supported the fastest, most coordinated, and successful global trouble in history to develop tools to fight a complaint. With significant advances in exploration and development by academia, private sector and government enterprise, the ACT-Accelerator is on the cusp of securing a way to end the acute phase of the epidemic by planting the tests, treatments and vaccines the world needs.
REFERENCES
(1) Our World in Data, Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccinations. Available at https//ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations. Last penetrated 16 November 2021
(2) WHO, UN set out way to meet world COVID vaccination targets. Available at https//www.who.int/news/item/07-10-2021-who-un-set-out-steps-to-meet-world-covid-vaccination-targets#
text=The new strategy outlines a, bymid-2022. Last penetrated November 2021
( 3) COVAX working for global indifferent access to COVID-19 vaccines. Available at https//www.who.int/initiatives/act-accelerator/covax. Last penetrated November 2021
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