Explainer | Covax: China’s in, America’s out, but what is it all about?

After saying for some time it wanted to support the global response to Covid-19, Beijing has finally committed to the WHO-led vaccine access alliance
Chinese scientists are involved in the development of several of the products the scheme hopes to distribute fairly around the world

Coronavirus pandemic

Kinling Loin Beijing

Published: 8:00pm, 9 Oct 2020

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China’s decision to join the global initiative for fair distribution of Covid-19 vaccines known as Covax could be a boon for the struggling vaccine project. But what is it and how does it work?

What is Covax?

The Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access (Covax) alliance was launched in April by the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Commission and France as a response to the global health crisis.

It will be implemented by the WHO, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the public-private partnership Gavi.

According to the WHO it is designed to serve as an “invaluable insurance policy to secure access to safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines”.

Nine CEPI-approved vaccine candidate vaccines are part of the Covax initiative and nine more – two of them Chinese – are under evaluation.

CEPI is an alliance to finance and coordinate the development of new vaccines to prevent and contain infectious disease epidemics.

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Covax aims to deliver at least 2 billion doses of approved vaccines by the end of next year and to ensure “equitable access” to them for all of the countries taking part.

The initiative is also designed to discourage national governments from hoarding vaccines and to prioritise the inoculation of people in high-risk groups in each country.

Gavi described the scheme as an insurance policy for wealthy countries should their own vaccine candidates or deals with foreign suppliers not go to plan.

Which countries are involved?

According to WHO figures, more than 160 countries had signed up for the initiative as of last month, including Australia, Britain, Canada and Japan. The European Commission will procure vaccine doses on behalf of the 27 EU member states and also for Norway and Iceland.

Each nation is classed either as “self-financing” or “funded”. The former are expected to pay for their own doses and contribute to the cost of providing vaccines to the latter, some of which will not have to pay anything at all.

Chinese teams are behind several of the Covid-19 vaccine candidates undergoing final phase testing. Photo: AP

Nations have already contributed US$1.4 billion to pay for research and development but the WHO said last month a further US$700 million to US$800 million was still needed.

Despite widespread international support for the scheme, neither the US nor Russia have joined. They are both working on their own vaccines and pursuing bilateral deals with other countries.

US President Donald Trump earlier accused the WHO of being corrupt and said it helped China, where the coronavirus was first identified, to downplay the scale of the health crisis.

Taiwan and Hong Kong have also signed up for Covax.

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How will the vaccines be distributed?

Once a Covid-19 vaccine has been shown to be safe and effective, and granted regulatory approval, doses will be allocated to the countries taking part in proportion to their populations.

The first phase of the programme aims to make enough doses available to inoculate 3 per cent of people in each country, which the WHO said would be enough to cover frontline health and social care workers.

Once sufficient numbers of doses are available, each country would receive enough to inoculate up to 20 per cent of their population, and additional doses would be provided to countries where they were considered most needed, it said.

Does China joining Covax change anything?

Beijing did not say exactly how it plans to support the scheme, but said earlier it was in favour of the fair distribution of vaccines around the world.

In May, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged US$2 billion over two years to support the global response to Covid-19, and Beijing has promised access and financial support to several countries on a bilateral basis.

The WHO said earlier it hoped China and other countries working on vaccine candidates would supply doses for distribution under the scheme.

China is responsible for four of the nine vaccine candidates currently undergoing final stage clinical trials around the world.

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