Coronavirus: WHO looks for ways to close COVID-19 funding gap

The World Health Organization is looking at new ways to help to fill a $28 billion funding shortfall in funding to fight COVID-19, a senior official said on Tuesday.

The ambitious initiative, known as COVAX, was created to ensure the entire world has access to COVID-19 vaccines - but so far it has secured only a fraction of the 2 billion doses it hopes to buy over the next year, and has yet to confirm any actual deals to ship out vaccines.

The coronavirus that has killed more than 1.6 million people has exposed vast inequities between countries, as fragile health systems and smaller economies were often hit harder. COVAX was set up by the WHO, vaccines alliance GAVI and CEPI, a global coalition to fight epidemics, to avoid the international stampede for vaccines that has accompanied past outbreaks and would reinforce those imbalances.

Bruce Aylward, a senior WHO adviser and its ACT co-ordinator, said that new financing mechanisms, including concessional loans and catastrophe bonds, were discussed at a meeting of the ACT facilitation council on Monday, co-chaired by Norway and South Africa.

Alexia Kapralos reports.

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