According to the international news organization Reuters, the global scheme to deliver COVID-19 vaccines to poorer and middle-income countries known as COVAX, where Albania and Kosovo adheres, “faces a very high risk of failure”. Reuters managed to review internal documents from the board of Gavi (the alliance of governments and international organizations and drug companies), which co-leads COVAX with WHO. These documents showed different struggles, including the “lack of funds, supply risks, and complex contractual arrangements which could make it impossible to achieve its goal.”
In various occasions, member of the Committee of Experts of Albania, and Prime Minister Rama, have mentioned COVAX as one of the mechanisms through which Albania will fight COVID-19 as soon as the vaccines will be available. On a speech made in the Parliament of Albania on November 16th, Rama acknowledged that Albania had already done the first payment to COVAX. Kosovo also has managed to be part of the list of the countries that would receive the vaccine from the programme.
According to the Reuters report, the fact that COVAX was set up in a record period of time, has been linked to the higher risk of failure. Besides that, Citigroup, a financial advisor group hired by Gavi, has said that “the biggest risk to the programme was from clauses in supply contracts that allow countries not to buy vaccines booked through COVAX.” Reuters continues by adding that a vaccine supply and demand mismatch “is not a commercial risk efficiently mitigated by the market or the MDBs,” according to the financial advisors. The failure of the COVAX programme would potentially leave billions of people across the globe without vaccine as late as 2024, the document said.
In order to vaccinate at least 20% of people living in poor countries, which is the goal of the programme, COVAX would need more than twice the funds it has already raised, which counts $2.1 billion
