Strategy to Achieve Global Covid-19 Vaccination by mid-2022 – World – ReliefWeb

The World Health Organization has today launched the Strategy to Achieve Global Covid-19 Vaccination by mid-2022 (the Strategy) to help bring an end to what has become a two-track pandemic: people in poorer countries continue to be at risk while those in richer countries with high vaccination rates enjoy much greater protection.

WHO had set a target to vaccinate 10% of every country, economy and territory by the end of September but by that date 56 countries had not been able to do so, the vast majority of these are countries in Africa and the Middle East.

The new strategy outlines a plan for achieving WHO's targets to vaccinate 40% of the population of every country by the end of this year and 70% by mid-2022.

"Science has played its part by delivering powerful, life-saving tools faster than for any outbreak in history," said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. "But the concentration of those tools in the hands of a few countries and companies has led to a global catastrophe, with the rich protected while the poor remain exposed to a deadly virus. We can still achieve the targets for this year and next, but it will take a level of political commitment, action and cooperation, beyond what we have seen to date."

"This is a costed, coordinated and credible path out of the COVID-19 pandemic for everyone, everywhere," said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. "Without a coordinated, equitable approach, a reduction of cases in any one country will not be sustained over time. For everyone's sake, we must urgently bring all countries to a high level of vaccination coverage."

To achieve the global vaccination targets, there should be a three-step approach to vaccination, with all older adults, health workers, and high-risk groups of all ages, in every country vaccinated first, followed by the full adult age group in every country and lastly extended vaccination of adolescents.

Vaccinating 70% of the global population requires at least 11 billion vaccine doses. By the end of September, just over 6 billion doses had already been administered worldwide. With global vaccine production now at nearly 1.5 billion doses per month, there is sufficient vaccine from a supply perspective to achieve the global vaccination targets provided that there is equitable distribution of those doses.

Substantial financing has already been invested to procure most of the required vaccine doses for low- and lower-middle-income countries through COVAX, the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT) and bilateral contracts. There needs to be additional investment to secure the remaining vaccine doses for these countries as well as investment to support in-country delivery.

The Strategy outlines the priority actions needed from the different actors to achieve the targets.

All Countries must:

Countries with high vaccine coverage must:

Vaccine-producing countries must:

COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers must:

Civil society, community organizations, and the private sector must:

Global and regional multilateral development banks and institutions must:

For their part, WHO, Gavi, UNICEF and CEPI must work in close collaboration with World Bank, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, Africa CDC, AVAT, and other key partners to monitor progress, identify changes needed to resolve bottlenecks, coordinate information and prioritize actions; continue to co-lead and manage the COVAX Pillar of ACT-Accelerator; support the equitable allocation of available vaccines, particularly to low-, lower-middle-income and lagging countries; directly support countries to develop and sustain rapid, effective, high-quality COVID-19 vaccine delivery programmes that can achieve the global targets; address key research, policy, safety and regulatory issues that will optimize *vaccine impact including *effective supply, dosing and vaccine schedules, mixing and matching of products, protection against variants, and other issues; and monitor and report monthly on progress towards the global COVID-19 vaccination goals.

Note to Editors:

The Strategy to Achieve Global Covid-19 Vaccination by mid-2022 can be read in its entirety here.

See also:

The Global COVID-19 Vaccination -- Strategic Vision for 2022 Technical Document

Slide deck on the Strategy to Achieve Global Covid-19 Vaccination by mid-2022

Following the WHO declaration of novel coronavirus as a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020, the main global immunization partners developed a global COVID-19 vaccination strategy through the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) Vaccines Pillar (COVAX). The ACT-A prioritized strategy and budget can be read here. The 2022 Global Vaccination Strategy is intended to complement that strategy.

The immediate goalof the global COVID-19 vaccination strategy is to minimize deaths, severe disease and overall disease burden; curtail the health system impact; fully resume socio-economic activity, and reduce the risk of new variants.

The 2022 Global COVID-19 Vaccination Strategy is based on a technical analysis that established a Conceptual COVID-19 Goal Framework which specifies a sequence of socio-economic and health goals, which could be achieved with various levels of vaccination scope and other interventions. The Conceptual Goal Framework structures the technical analyses of vaccination requirements to achieve ever broader health, social and economic goals and builds upon WHO's broader COVID-19 Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan (SPRP) first published in 2020 and subsequently updated in 2021. The SPRP's strategic objectives inform and align with the health and socioeconomic dimensions of the Global COVID-19 Vaccine Strategic Vision Goal Framework.

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Strategy to Achieve Global Covid-19 Vaccination by mid-2022 - World - ReliefWeb