The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust announced they would boost investments in the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which aims to prepare for future pandemics by cutting the time required to develop a new vaccine to just 100 days.
The two global foundations called on governments to contribute billions of dollars to the effort at a fundraising event in London in March, saying the need “to deliver new, lifesaving tools has never been more urgent.”
Since its inception five years ago, CEPI has played a central role in curbing epidemics around the world, overseeing a number of scientific breakthroughs and advances in pandemic preparedness.
The organisation’s five-year strategy aims to compress the time needed to develop a vaccine against a new viral threat to 100 days, around a third of the time it took the world to develop the first Covid-19 vaccines.
“When you are fighting a rapidly growing outbreak… every moment in every day counts. Delivering vaccines in 11 months as we did in 2020 was unprecedented, but it certainly wasn’t good enough,” CEPI Chief Executive Richard Hatchett told reporters in a briefing.
“Had our 100 days goal been achieved for Covid 19, a vaccine could have been available as early as April 2020 – millions of lives and trillions of dollars could have been saved and the spread of dangerous variants, which have clearly prolonged the pandemic, might have been averted.”
The Gates Foundation and Wellcome have each pledged $150 million for a total of $300 million (£221 million) to CEPI, a global partnership that co-leads the COVAX initiative to deliver vaccines to the world’s poorer nations.
The pledges come ahead of a fundraising conference in London on March 8, sponsored by the UK government, that aims to raise $3.5 billion to help CEPI prepare for future disease outbreaks.
“Five years ago, following the Ebola and Zika epidemics, our foundation helped launch CEPI,” said Bill Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation. “Today, we’re increasing our commitment … to help CEPI accelerate the development of safe and effective vaccines against emerging variants of the coronavirus and to prepare for, and possibly even prevent, the next pandemic.”
Faster vaccine development times and more equitable distribution of vaccines around the world would save millions of lives. While the UK and other wealthy nations roll out their Covid-19 booster programmes, 40 per cent of the world’s population has yet to receive a first dose.
Recent data from Northeastern University in the United States show that had the availability of vaccines in lower-income countries like Kenya been akin to that in wealthy countries like the UK or the U.S., 70 per cent of global Covid-19 deaths to date would have been averted.
Professor Cherry Gagandeep Kang, a virologist and CEPI board member, said the Covid-19 pandemic had exposed inequalities in vaccine access and that CEPI had “baked in” commitments its contracts with vaccine developers to ensure life-saving inoculations are shared globally.
CEPI has built one of the world’s largest and most diverse portfolios of Covid-19 vaccine candidates and made early investments in the development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Novavax’s protein-based Covid-19 vaccine—funded largely by CEPI— is poised to help efforts to control the global pandemic.
More than 1 billion Novavax doses are now available to COVAX, the programme that aims to deliver equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines.
CEPI is also working on next-generation Covid-19 vaccines, including a “variant-proof” jab and an inoculation that could protect against all coronaviruses, potentially removing the threat of future coronavirus pandemics.
"None of us believe Omicron will be the last variant or that Covid-19 will be the last pandemic," said Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of Wellcome, at the briefing.
“We urge leaders to provide their support and ensure that CEPI reaches its funding target. It is in the world’s collective interest to avoid repeating mistakes and to help future generations prevent epidemics.”
Investments of billions now could avert trillions in economic damage and save countless lives - “it’s a pretty good insurance policy,” Gates said. The philanthropist added that spending on innovation to brace for a future pandemic could also help tackle known diseases, including HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.
