Spain advocates sharing knowledge, increasing production and stepping up distribution of vaccines at sixth meeting of the ACT-A Facilitation Council initiative

The State Secretary for International Cooperation, Ángeles Moreno Bau, has taken part today, on behalf of Spain, in the sixth meeting of the ACT-A Facilitation Council initiative (Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator) - a multilateral platform for the development and supply of vaccines, diagnoses and treatments against COVID-19.

Spain has formed part of the Facilitation Council since the very beginning and has taken part in the previous five meetings. The government has committed 125 million euros to the ACT-A and has announced that additional financial contributions will be made. Spain is also a contributor to the 1-billion euro allocation from the European Union.

The Facilitation Council analysed the progress made since the last meeting, particularly the production and supply capacity of vaccines to all regions of the world. The Secretary-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom, and the European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Stella Kyriakides, co-chaired this meeting, which focused its debate on identifying the barriers to fight the pandemic at a country level and the strategies for expanding the global production of vaccines.

The COVAX mechanism - one of the pillars of the ACT-A, has distributed, since the start of May, some 54 million vaccines to 122 countries. Despite the challenges, its aim is to reach 2 billion vaccines to low- and medium-income countries by the end of the year.

On behalf of Spain, the State Secretary for International Cooperation declared the need to complement the 'valuable work of the ACT-A', with actions in other areas, such as 'doing away with trade barriers, including import and export rights throughout the value chain, which spans the vaccines and the components to product them'.

Along this line, she presented the 'Vaccines for everyone' initiative to the Facilitation Council, which advocates international action based on three pillars: making intellectual property rights more flexible, which will allow the transfer of all knowledge on the virus; the establishment of a manufacturing, supply and demand platform to adapt the existing manufacturing facilities to demand; and the guarantee of global transport, storage and distribution capacity through greater financial coordination and public-private alliances between airlines, governments and international organisations.

Ángeles Moreno Bau also recalled that Spain is going to donate between 5% and 10% of the vaccines received in 2021 - some 7.5 million - to countries in Ibero-America - 'a region which, with 8% of the world's population, exceeds 25% of the pandemic's mortality rate'.

ACT-A celebrates first anniversary

The ACT-A initiative was set up just over a year ago, in April 2020. In this time, it has managed to start vaccination in low- and medium-income countries just 12 weeks later than in high-income countries. It has also distributed more than 60 million diagnostic tests and has guaranteed 3 million treatments with dexametasona. Despite these achievements, the financing deficit to achieve the targets set stands at 19 billion dollars.

The main challenge is to reverse the levels of inequality between countries to tackle the pandemic. At present, more than 80% of the vaccines have been administered in high-income countries. Africa is the continent with the lowest rate of people vaccinated, only 1.5 people per 100 to date. This difference also translates in the ratio of diagnostic tests performed, a key element for detecting new variants of the virus. This ratio is 90 times lower in low- and medium-income countries than those with high incomes.

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