One year on, ACT-Accelerator still faces 19 bln USD gap

GENEVA, April 23 (Xinhua) -- The Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, a new global collaboration to accelerate the development, production and equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, marked its first anniversary on April 23.

At a press conference held here on Friday, top officials of the partnership, launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners, recognized its achievements but acknowledged that the initiative still needs 19 billion U.S. dollars this year and that the global shortage of vaccines remains a major issue.

"The current unfunded gap for the accelerator is 19 billion U.S. dollars," explained Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund. The previously calculated gap of 38 billion dollars has been reduced by fresh funding.

"It's worth reflecting very quickly on the fact that while I don't want to diminish the achievements of the accelerator," he said, "the world would be in a better position if we had actually succeeded in getting that 38 billion roughly 12 months ago."

Furthermore, while the ACT Accelerator has already distributed over 40 million vaccine doses to 118 countries, "this is not enough," commented Seth Berkley, chief executive officer (CEO) of the Gavi Vaccine Alliance.

Berkley commended France's decision to donate close to 105,600 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to the ACT, but said that "we need more countries to donate vaccines because there is a limit to how many one can purchase on the open market."

He said that not enough vaccines were manufactured and stressed that "we do need a spectacular increase in the volume of production."

"The world produces somewhere around four to five billion doses," he explained. "What we're talking about is a tripling or quadrupling of production."

The lack of funding and vaccines for the ACT should be bridged "in the near term" as "every day that we miss, people are not getting tested in countries ... people are not getting isolated and people are dying," said Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the WHO director general on organizational change.