AFRICA – The Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) has announced that it has signed advance purchase agreements with Sinopharm and Sinovac for immediate supply of Sinopharm’s “BBIBP-Corv” vaccine and Sinovac’s “CoronaVac” vaccine to the COVAX facility.

COVAX largely ensures adequate and equitable supply of vaccines to Africa. So far, they have managed to supply 25 million cases. Nineteen countries have used more than 80% of their COVAX-supplied doses, while 31 countries have used more than 50%.

In the past two weeks, more than 1.6 million doses were delivered to Africa through COVAX. More than 20 million Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses are expected to arrive imminently from the United States through COVAX, in coordination with the African Union.

The agreements will make 110 million doses immediately available to participants of the COVAX facility, with options for additional doses.

Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of GAVI said, “this is yet another example of GAVI’s active portfolio management strategy, ensuring the Facility has options in the face of constraints such as supply delays. Thanks to this deal, and because these vaccines have already received WHO Emergency Use Listing, we can move to start supplying doses to countries immediately.”

According to GAVI, the Sinopharm APA enables Q3 supply, with GAVI committing to purchase, on behalf of the COVAX Facility, 60 million doses that will be made available from July through October 2021.

In addition, GAVI has the option to purchase a further 60 million doses in Q4 2021 and 50 million more doses in the first half of 2022, if necessary.

This equates to a potential total of 170 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine that could be made available to self-financing participants of the Facility as well as participants supported by the Gavi COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC).

On the other hand, the Sinovac APA enables Q3 supply, with GAVI committing to purchase, on behalf of the COVAX Facility, 50 million doses to be made available from July through September 2021.

In addition, GAVI has the option to purchase a further 150 million doses in Q4 2021 and 180 million more doses in the first half of 2022.

In total, up to 380 million potential doses of the Sinovac vaccine could be available to both self-financing participants of the Facility as well as those supported by the Gavi COVAX AMC.

COVAX is on track to deliver more than 2 billion doses by early 2022. Of these, 1.8 billion fully donor-funded doses will be available for the 92 lower-income participants eligible for support by the Gavi COVAX AMC.