Combatting Covid 19 Variant

Funding will go toward critical R&D to meet the challenges of this rapidly evolving pandemic & facilitate equitable access to safe effective vaccines. Objectives are:

Enable equitable access to vaccines to reduce circulation of virus—thereby limiting opportunities for viral mutation—and reducing the disease burden on health systems.
Create conditions where vaccines can be rapidly adapted (within 100 days) to the new strains, and increase manufacturing capacity to make enough for global need
Optimise and deploy the existing suite of vaccines, including through the testing of ‘mix and match’ regimens and booster doses.
Support development of new strain-specific vaccines and second-generation vaccines that are more robust to viral evolution
Accelerating development of breakthrough vaccine candidates
 

Funding would support:

Next generation vaccine candidates with potentially significant health impacts, e.g. candidates that elicit mucosal immunity or single dose candidates. Scale-up development of promising candidates.
Expanding CEPI’s “Agility Programme” to understand the impact of variants on vaccine efficacy & support decision making on the need to adapt existing vaccines.
Building protection against variants to prepare for the emergence of potential new variants.
Developing a broadly protective coronavirus vaccine that could eliminate the risk of existing coronaviruses & new, unknown coronaviruses.