Open Society Foundations (OSF), MedAccess, and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance have announced a $200 million partnership to create a risk-sharing facility that will help countries procure additional COVID-19 vaccine doses tailored to individual country needs.

The GAVI COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC) provides COVID-19 vaccines free of charge for 92 of the world’s lowest-income countries, and AMC countries can use the COVAX cost-sharing mechanism to order additional doses using domestic resources or low-cost financing from their multilateral development bank partners to protect more people, more quickly. Through the partnership, MedAccess will provide a $100 million procurement guarantee to enable COVAX to order more doses from manufacturers on behalf of AMC countries choosing to participate in cost sharing; and OSF will provide a further procurement guarantee of up to $100 million through its Soros Economic Development Fund.

“COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on health and financial systems in every country,” said MedAccess CEO Michael Anderson. “Donors have stepped up with huge sums of money to drive COVAX’s initial dose allocations but innovative finance can unlock even greater value. Our support for GAVI will enable COVAX to work with countries to speed up access to these essential vaccines and put their programs on a more sustainable footing.”

“The inequities in access to vaccines in poor countries is one of the biggest, collective global failings of our time,” said OSF president Mark Malloch-Brown. “Since the beginning of the pandemic, Open Society has responded in diverse ways to ensure that the most vulnerable have equitable access to vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics—just like those in rich countries. COVAX’s cost-sharing mechanism is an additional and important way to ensure governments have the agency, on their terms, to determine if, how, and when they acquire low-cost doses for their populations.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/Mongkolchon Akesin)