By Emma Farge and Matthias Blamont
GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization said on Friday it had reached an agreement with Pfizer / BioNTech for 40 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine and should be able to deliver vaccines to poor and lower middle-income people next month. program.
The COVAX scheme, led by the WHO and the GAVI vaccine alliance, has signed deals for hundreds of millions of doses to vaccinate people in poor and lower-middle-income countries, but vaccinations have yet to begin. Pfizer’s vaccine is so far the only one obtained by the WHO emergency consent.
“In this world, we are protected just as much as our neighbor,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla officially announced to Reuters on Thursday.
Bourla said the 40 million doses, a fraction of the company’s total 2021 production estimate of 2 billion, would be sold on a non-profit basis. He described it as an initial agreement and said that in future more doses could be provided by the COVAX program.
The agreement comes amid growing criticism of inequality in vaccines from both the WHO and others, as rich countries vaccinate millions of people using shots obtained through bilateral transactions.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the new agreement with Pfizer should allow vaccinations to start for health workers in February, although details of the arrangements are still being finalized.
He said he hoped the agreement would also encourage other countries to donate more of their Pfizer shots to support rapid implementation, as Norway has done.
“The commitment of the (United States) to join COVAX, together with this new agreement with Pfizer / BioNTech, means that we are closer to fulfilling the promise of COVAX,” he said.
U.S. President Joe Biden, chief medical adviser to Anthony Fauci, said Thursday that the United States plans to join the facility. Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, halted funding for the body in Geneva and announced a withdrawal process.
The WHO said earlier this week that it plans to deliver 135 million vaccines in the first quarter of 2021, without giving a breakdown per supplier.
GAVI CEO Seth Berkley said in the same briefing that countries would receive dose estimates for the early part of this year in about a week.
(Posted by Matthias Blamont, Emma Farge and Peter Graff; Written by Peter Graff; Edited by Louise Heavens and Sonya Hepinstall)