Online Event: The Scramble for Vaccines and the COVAX Facility
"Online Event: The Scramble for Vaccines and the COVAX Facility." CSIS Commission on Strengthening America's Health Security, Center for Strategic and International Studies, August 11, 2020. Accessed December 21, 2023. https://healthsecurity.csis.org/events/online-event-the-scramble-for-vaccines-and-the-covax-facility/
On August 11, the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security hosted a discussion on the ACT Accelerator’s COVAX Facility. The event featured Nikolaj Gilbert, President and CEO at PATH; Kendall Hoyt, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Dartmouth University’s Geisel School of Medicine; and Nicole Lurie, Strategic Advisor to the CEO at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). J. Stephen Morrison, Senior Vice President and Director of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, introduced the event with an overview of the COVAX Facility and its prospects for success. Margaret “Peggy” Hamburg, Commissioner on the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security, moderated the discussion.
The global scramble for Covid-19 vaccines is a historic enterprise, unprecedented in its breadth, scale, and speed. Although vaccine nationalism dominates the global vaccine landscape, with wealthy countries locking down vaccine supply for their sovereign purposes, COVAX has emerged as a promising, nascent, international initiative to develop and equitably distribute Covid-19 vaccines to benefit all countries. Under the joint leadership of the World Health Organization (WHO), Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), COVAX aims to develop and distribute two billion vaccines to the world’s 20 percent most vulnerable by the end of 2021.
The CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security hosted this timely discussion of COVAX: How does it work? What will it cost? What will it take for COVAX to succeed? What role can the United States play in that effort? The panelists discussed these issues and the implications they may have on the trajectory of the pandemic in the United States and around the world.
This event was made possible by the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Full video of the event is available here: https://youtu.be/5T4v3XCplOE