The relative obscurity of this vaccine program belies its critical role in the global battle against Covid-19. Indeed, COVAX may well be the most important acronym of 2021. As vaccine nationalism rears its ugly head, it’s the best — perhaps the only — bet on getting billions of doses to lower- and middle-income countries.
COVAX is an entity run by a coalition that includes the Vaccine Alliance known as Gavi and the World Health Organization (WHO), and is funded by donations from governments, multilateral institutions and foundations. Its mission is to buy coronavirus vaccines in bulk and send them to poorer nations that can’t compete with wealthy countries in securing contracts with the major drug companies.
It has secured almost 2.3 billion doses for distribution this year. Of that total 1.8 billion should be made available to 92 of the world’s poorest countries — the majority of…
