The UK’s support of the COVAX facility will help Pakistan with its COVID-19 vaccination programme.
The UK has contributed £548m to the global vaccine COVAX facility, which will help Pakistan with the delivery of 17 million doses of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine. This will be followed by an additional 10 million doses, predicted to be delivered before June. This will help protect 8.5 million people in Pakistan from coronavirus, which has already claimed over 12,000 lives in the country.
The COVAX initiative is helping more than 180 countries to have fair, early access to COVID-19 vaccines, aiming to support the discovery, manufacture, and fair distribution of COVID-19 vaccines for one billion people by the end of 2021.
Helping vaccinate people around the world
The UK has contributed around £20m of aid, since April 2020, to help Pakistan fight the COVID-19 pandemic, including funding the World Health Organization (WHO) to build laboratory testing capacity through training and the provision of equipment across Pakistan. It has also pledged up to £1.3bn of aid overall to help end the COVID-19 pandemic as quickly as possible, including up to £829m for the development and distribution of new vaccines, treatments, and tests, and £5m for other critical COVID-19 research and development.
British High Commissioner Dr Christian Turner CMG said: “The people of the UK and Pakistan have come together to fight COVID-19. The COVAX facility has been the main way the world has united to make sure all countries get the vaccines they need as quickly as possible, including Pakistan. The UK has been a world leader in supporting COVAX, and COVAX has committed to supplying Pakistan with COVID-19 vaccines for 45 million people this year.”
The UK-hosted Global Vaccines Summit, which took place on 4 June, 2020 raised US$8.8bn from 32 donor governments and 12 foundations, corporations, and organisations. This will help to replenish Global Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) funding over the coming five years, which will help support the delivery of life-saving vaccinations in 68 countries and will be integral to the distribution of a coronavirus vaccine once it is developed.
