Sweden announced on Monday 3 May its intention to donate one million doses of vaccine to the Covax Facility, the global mechanism for universal and equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines led by WHO, GAVI and CEPI (see EUROPE 12698/29).
The EU, its Member States and the EIB are one of the main supporters of Covax, contributing 2.47 billion euros (see EUROPE 12702/2).
The announcement, made by the Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs, Per Olsson Fridh, was immediately welcomed as “excellent news” by the Commissioner for International Partnerships, Jutta Urpilainen.
“The EU continues to step up its global solidarity efforts by sharing vaccines! We are in a global race against the pandemic and the virus must be fought on all fronts. Every action counts”, she commented on Twitter.
To date, 49 million doses of vaccine have been delivered to 121 countries via Covax.
The goal is to deliver 2 billion to all participating countries, including 1.3 billion to 92 low- and middle-income countries by the end of 2021.
“We hope more countries will follow our lead”, the Swedish Minister said on Twitter.
France has already announced that it will donate 500,000 doses by mid-June at the latest, and Spain that it will share between 5 and 20% of its doses, a Commission spokeswoman said on Monday. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)