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Covax: The key to beating covid-19 | Network of experts | Future planet

by Naomi Parham

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It’s been over a year since the coronavirus pandemic started making headlines and our lives. For so many people – here in Canada and around the world – this has been a time of unprecedented stress and pain. We all wait to breathe a sigh of relief once our family, friends and communities have received their vaccines.

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It is perfectly natural for us to focus on the health of our loved ones, but we cannot forget that the virus does not respect borders. It is not enough to just focus on our local responses to the pandemic; As we work to vaccinate high-risk Canadians, we also need to make sure the rest of the world is on track to get vaccinated and that everyone has access to safe and effective tests and treatments. To fight this virus everywhere, we must defeat it everywhere.

Fighting a virus on a global scale is a daunting task, but there are very good reasons to be hopeful. We celebrated in December when a personal health assistant in Toronto received Canada’s first COVID-19 vaccine, but now we have even more reason to celebrate, thanks to breakthroughs in global vaccine implementation through of the Access Fund. 19 Vaccines (Covax).

Since February 24, tens of millions of doses have been delivered to more than 70 countries around the world, making this the largest and fastest global vaccination campaign in history. In Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, healthcare professionals and the high-risk population were among the first to receive the vaccine with doses of Covax and are in class similar campaigns in Nigeria, Jamaica and Albania. We are seeing a global response and must recognize it as the important milestone that it is.

Canada joined Covax in September because we have full confidence in its mission – to accelerate the development and manufacture of covid-19 vaccines and to ensure their equitable distribution. The fund was created to ensure access to a wide variety of vaccines and to put smaller and poorer countries on an equal footing with larger and richer ones. Through large-scale procurement, Covax is able to distribute doses around the world in the fairest and most efficient way possible.

Canada joined Covax in September because we have full confidence in its mission: to accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines and to ensure their equitable distribution.

Covax was conceived as a true cooperative association: it has 190 member countries, represents over 90 percent of the world’s population and it has a much higher purchasing power than that of most countries alone. Also, when Covax was first created, no one knew which vaccines would work or which vaccines would be approved first. This is why Canada asked this platform to obtain doses for the country; Our deal with the fund complemented other contracts we already had and increased our chances of a successful local vaccination campaign, while contributing globally.

Along with its own procurement activities, Canada has launched investments that will also help make vaccines, therapies and diagnostics affordable and accessible around the world. Thanks to our various advance purchase agreements, we may end up with a surplus of vaccine doses. Exactly when this can happen will be known in the coming months, when the Canadian Department of Health completes its review of candidates for the doses and we confirm the progress of vaccination in the country.

Whenever this happens, we will work closely with our international partners – including other countries, Gavi, Covax and vaccine manufacturers – to explore all possible delivery options for these doses to those who need it. need it. It will take time to vaccinate the world’s population. Covax has already achieved over 2 billion doses by 2021, but now we must achieve the same spirit of global cooperation to ensure that this supply continues to grow and that no vulnerable population is left unattended.

The Covax fund cannot be minimized, this is one of the remarkable achievements of today: for the first time the world has united to guarantee equitable and universal access to vaccines.

The good news is that we didn’t start from scratch: Canada has been funding global health projects in developing countries for decades and will continue to do so. These investments have helped fight polio, HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and Ebola, and have helped countries respond to the COVID-19 crisis with proven and adaptable public health solutions, such as mass testing and contact tracing.

If we have learned anything from this crisis, it is that we must maintain the capacity to adapt to rapidly changing situations. Less than a year after the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic, we have developed and approved safe and effective vaccines, which are now reaching those who need them most.

The Covax fund cannot be minimized, this is one of the remarkable achievements of today: for the first time the world has united to ensure equitable and universal access to vaccines.

Our global and local responses to the coronavirus are inextricably linked, and Covax is our best option to overcome the pandemic. When international cooperation is successful, we all win.

Karina gould is Canada’s Minister of International Development.

spanish translation by Ant-Translation. Copyright: Project union, 2021.

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