Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said Canada will donate an additional $220 million to the global vaccine-sharing alliance COVAX.
The funds will bring Canada’s total monetary donation to COVAX to approximately $700 million for the purchase, delivery and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines for low-income countries.
“Our collective goal must be to increase access to COVID-19 vaccines and other medical countermeasures, so that every country has what it needs to protect its population against this virus,” said Mr. Trudeau on Friday, during a virtual COVAX summit.
The COVAX program raised an additional US$1.7 billion from countries like Canada at the event.
The money is intended to help Canada meet its commitment to donate at least 200 million doses by the end of the year.
The latest cash donation aims to help recipient countries prepare to receive and distribute the proposed vaccines.
Last month, International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan traveled to Senegal and Ghana to meet with local officials overseeing their immunization programs.
Mr Sajjan said the issue of vaccine donations was no longer about supply. Rather, according to the minister, the issues revolve around limitations in the distribution of vaccines in recipient countries, including peripheral supplies like syringes, and high levels of vaccine hesitancy, particularly among young people. He said his discussions during this trip were useful in helping to direct Canada’s aid to where it is most needed.
“The main challenge right now for us is not supply,” he said. It’s about putting in place all the other tools. »
Justin McAuley, Canadian spokesperson for the global anti-poverty agency ONE, said the new funds are helpful. For the first year of COVID-19 vaccines, supply was the main constraint in both rich and low-income countries.
Mr McAuley said COVAX was no longer running out of doses. Its own supply deals with vaccine makers are beginning to bear fruit, and wealthy countries like Canada that grabbed all the early doses of vaccines have immunized most of their populations and have plenty of excess doses.
“But some countries don’t have the refrigerators, syringes and health workers to inject the doses,” McAuley said. So when we fund COVAX like we have today, it ensures that the logistical support is there so that our doses don’t end up deteriorating in warehouses. »
He pointed out that the funding can also help COVAX mount public awareness campaigns to overcome apathy and hesitancy to get vaccinated.
But McAuley said Canada began offering many doses only when they were no longer needed for the Canadian population and, in many cases, when their expiry date was approaching.
He argued that Canada must provide a stable and predictable supply of vaccine donations so that countries in need can prepare to receive and inject them.
Earlier this year, John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called for a pause in donations because there were so many being offered that countries could not meet the needs for storage or get them to people fairly quickly.
He said transporting vaccines and supplies like syringes to remote locations is still a challenge, there is a shortage of healthcare workers capable of administering vaccines and vaccine hesitancy is high. .
Canada has fully vaccinated 82% of its population and a third dose has been administered to 48% of people. As a group, the world’s wealthiest countries have fully vaccinated 74% of their population and boosted 38%.
The poorest countries have fully vaccinated less than 12% of their population, and only 15% of people have received even a single dose.
Canada pledged to donate 38 million doses from its own domestic supplies and an additional 13 million from doses Canada purchased from COVAX but did not need.
So far, Canada has shipped 14.2 million doses to 19 countries through COVAX and another 762,000 directly to six countries through bilateral vaccine donation agreements.
It is stated that an additional 87 million doses were purchased by COVAX with previous financial donations from Canada, but this number is based on a cost-per-dose formula developed by the UK, and COVAX itself says it cannot confirm the exact number.