• The signed advance purchase agreement (APA) will make up to 414 million doses of the Clover vaccine candidate available to the COVAX Facility, pending WHO Emergency Use Listing (EUL)

  • Supply will be available to self-financing participants of the COVAX Facility as well as lower-income economies eligible to be supported by the Gavi COVAX Advance market Commitment (AMC), expected to commence Q4 2021

  • Gavi CEO Seth Berkley: “The pandemic continues to evolve, and in order to be best prepared, COVAX’s actively managed, diverse portfolio will be critical to meeting countries’ needs, and protecting against risks such as regulatory delays, variants and supply constraints. Today’s agreement with Clover Biopharmaceuticals is yet another important step in that direction.”

Geneva, 30 June 2021 – Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance announced today that it had signed an advance purchase agreement (APA) with Clover Biopharmaceuticals for its SCB-2019 protein-based adjuvanted vaccine candidate against COVID-19. The agreement will make up to 414 million doses available to participants of the COVAX Facility.   

Under the APA, Gavi commits to purchase, on behalf of the COVAX Facility, 64 million doses to be made available in 2021 and has the option to purchase up to 350 million doses in 2022. Supply of the vaccine is anticipated to commence in Q4 2021, pending WHO EUL. In order to address the rising threat of variants, the agreement also provides the opportunity to access doses of potential variant-adapted vaccine in the future. 

“The pandemic continues to evolve, and in order to be best prepared, COVAX’s actively managed, diverse portfolio will be critical to meeting countries’ needs, and protecting against risks such as regulatory delays, variants, and supply constraints,” said Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi. “Today’s agreement with Clover Biopharmaceuticals is yet another important step in that direction.”

The COVAX Facility portfolio, administered by Gavi, currently consists of agreements related to 9 vaccines and vaccine candidates – AstraZeneca/Oxford, Clover, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Novavax, Pfizer-BioNTech, SII-Covishield, SII-Covovax, and Sanofi/GSK – with the aim to expand to 10-12 vaccines in total, providing participants access to a diverse range of vaccines suitable for use in varied contexts and settings, and to mitigate against the risk of R&D failures, regulatory delays and supply constraints.    

Highlighting the end-to-end nature of COVAX, early investments by Gavi partner and COVAX co-lead the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which administers the COVAX R&D portfolio, were critical to funding development and enabling access to these doses. The development and manufacturing of Clover’s vaccine were accelerated by early, significant funding from CEPI and equitable access commitments were directly linked to this funding – ensuring that vaccine output funded by this investment would be made available for procurement and allocation through the COVAX Facility. 

“Today’s announcement of an advanced purchase agreement between Gavi and Clover will secure hundreds of millions of doses – pending an Emergency Use Listing from WHO – for globally fair allocation and will further support low-income and middle-income countries so that they can protect the most vulnerable members of their societies against this deadly virus,” said Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI. “CEPI moved with urgency early on in the pandemic to accelerate the R&D needed to develop safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines, at speed. By late Spring 2020, CEPI had established nine COVID-19 vaccine programmes, including an early investment in Clover Biopharmaceuticals to advance their promising protein-based adjuvanted vaccine candidate and to enable equitable access to vaccine output funded by CEPI’s investment.”

Joshua Liang, Chief Executive Officer of Clover Biopharmaceuticals said, “We are grateful for the support from Gavi, CEPI, and other COVAX partners in our joint pursuit of supporting global equitable access of COVID-19 vaccines and helping protect at-risk groups in participating countries. This pandemic continues to have a profound impact on the world, and we remain dedicated to expediting the availability of our COVID-19 vaccine candidate for procurement and global distribution.”

Notes to editors

More information on COVAX is available here.

About COVAX

COVAX, the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, is co-led by CEPI, Gavi and WHO – working in partnership with UNICEF and PAHO as delivery partners, developed and developing country vaccine manufacturers, the World Bank, and others. It is the only global initiative that is working with governments and manufacturers to ensure COVID-19 vaccines are available worldwide to both high-income and lower-income countries.

About Gavi’s role in COVAX

Gavi is leading on procurement and delivery at scale for COVAX: coordinating the design, implementation and administration of the COVAX Facility and the COVAX AMC and working with its Alliance partners UNICEF and WHO, along with governments, on country readiness and delivery. 

As part of this role, Gavi hosts the Office of the COVAX Facility to coordinate the operation and governance of the mechanism as a whole, manages relationships with Facility participants, and negotiates advance purchase agreements with manufacturers of vaccines and promising vaccine candidates to secure doses on behalf of the more than 190 economies participating in the COVAX Facility. 

It also coordinates design, operation and fundraising for the COVAX AMC that supports 92 lower-income economies, including a no-fault compensation mechanism that will be administered by WHO. As part of this work, Gavi supports governments and partners on ensuring country readiness, providing funding and oversight of UNICEF procurement of vaccines as well as partners’ and governments work on readiness and delivery. This includes support for cold chain equipment, technical assistance, syringes, vehicles, and other aspects of the vastly complex logistical operation for delivery.

About ACT-Accelerator 

The Access to COVID-19 Tools ACT-Accelerator, is a new, ground-breaking global collaboration to accelerate the development, production, and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines. It was set up in response to a call from G20 leaders in March and launched by the WHO, European Commission, France and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in April 2020. 

The ACT-Accelerator is not a decision-making body or a new organisation, but works to speed up collaborative efforts among existing organisations to end the pandemic. It is a framework for collaboration that has been designed to bring key players around the table with the goal of ending the pandemic as quickly as possible through the accelerated development, equitable allocation, and scaled up delivery of tests, treatments and vaccines, thereby protecting health systems and restoring societies and economies in the near term. It draws on the experience of leading global health organisations which are tackling the world’s toughest health challenges, and who, by working together, are able to unlock new and more ambitious results against COVID-19. Its members share a commitment to ensure all people have access to all the tools needed to defeat COVID-19 and to work with unprecedented levels of partnership to achieve it. 

The ACT-Accelerator has four areas of work: diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines and the health system connector. Cross-cutting all of these is the workstream on Access & Allocation. 

About Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance is a public-private partnership that helps vaccinate half the world’s children against some of the world’s deadliest diseases. Since its inception in 2000, Gavi has helped to immunise a whole generation – over 822 million children – and prevented more than 14 million deaths, helping to halve child mortality in 73 lower-income countries. Gavi also plays a key role in improving global health security by supporting health systems as well as funding global stockpiles for Ebola, cholera, meningitis and yellow fever vaccines. After two decades of progress, Gavi is now focused on protecting the next generation and reaching the unvaccinated children still being left behind, employing innovative finance and the latest technology – from drones to biometrics – to save millions more lives, prevent outbreaks before they can spread and help countries on the road to self-sufficiency. Learn more at www.gavi.org and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.

The Vaccine Alliance brings together developing country and donor governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank, the vaccine industry, technical agencies, civil society, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other private sector partners. View the full list of donor governments and other leading organizations that fund Gavi’s work here.

Media Contacts

Meghana Sharafudeen
+41 79 711 5554
msharafudeen@gavi.org

Iryna Mazur
+41 79 429 3671
imazur@gavi.org

Evan O’Connell
+33 6 17 57 21 26
eoconnell@gavi.org

Laura Shevlin
+ 41 79 529 92 87
lshevlin@gavi.org

Cirũ Kariũki
+41 79 913 94 41
ckariuki@gavi.org

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