Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance announced that it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Novavax that, combined with a separate existing agreement with Serum Institute of India (SII), will provide a total of 1.1 billion doses of the company’s NVX-CoV2373 COVID-19 vaccine candidate to the COVAX Facility.
The MoU lays the foundation for agreement on final terms via an advance purchase agreement and is a critical step toward making sure doses of the vaccine if approved and licensed, will be made available to all countries and economies participating in the COVAX Facility.
The 1.1 billion cumulative volume of doses will be made available to the Facility via both a final advance purchase agreement with Novavax, once signed, and an existing agreement between Gavi and the Serum Institute of India (SII) made possible by a technology transfer agreement, at no cost, between Novavax and SII and facilitated by UNICEF’s fully executed Long Term Agreement with SII. The proportion of overall volume supplied to the COVAX Facility directly by Novavax will be the subject of discussions that will form an eventual advance purchase agreement.
“This agreement brings the COVAX Facility one step closer to its goal of supplying vaccines globally and ending the acute phase of the pandemic,” said Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi. “It helps us close in on our goal of delivering two billion doses in 2021 and increases the range of vaccines available to us as we build a portfolio suitable for all settings and contexts.”
NVX-CoV2373 is part of the COVAX R&D portfolio, and the development and manufacturing of the vaccine have been accelerated by investments by COVAX co-lead CEPI. CEPI’s investments were directly linked to equitable access commitments which have been key to enabling this MoU.
“With this MoU in place, the vaccine candidate developed by our partners at Novavax is poised to play a significant role in combatting COVID-19 around the world,” said Dr. Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI. “CEPI’s investments in this vaccine have been pivotal to enabling equitable access to a significant volume of this vaccine through COVAX.”
As co-lead for COVAX, Gavi oversees the design, coordination, and implementation of the COVAX Facility, a global mechanism which seeks to procure, equitably allocate and deliver at least 2 billion doses of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines by the end of 2021. 98 higher-income economies have signed up as self-financing members of the Facility, joining 92 low-and middle-income economies who will have their participation supported by the Gavi COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC).
