The World Health Organization's COVAX Facility for equal vaccine opportunity has provided first round of coronavirus doses to 70 countries, the head of the facility said on Monday.
"We have 32 million doses that have been delivered to 70 participating economies," COVAX Facility Managing Director Aurelia Nguyen said in a live-streamed discussion hosted by the International Monetary Fund.
Many poor countries depend on COVAX, which was set up last year with GAVI, an alliance of vaccine partners, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, to get vaccines for the COVID-19. The program is meant to distribute 2.0 billion COVID-19 doses in an equitable way for 2021.
Under the plan, poorer countries get doses for free and no country would vaccinate more than 20 percent of its people before another country had a similar opportunity.
COVAX struggled to mobilize support needed from wealthy nations to subsidize its program. It has only secured orders for 1.07 billion doses so far, as wealthy provider nations have preferred to sign bilateral supply deals.
