EU offers 400 million euros to WHO-led COVID-19 vaccine initiative

[webfact]

EU offers 400 million euros to WHO-led COVID-19 vaccine initiative

By Francesco Guarascio and Stephanie Nebehay

 

European Union flags flutter outside the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium August 21, 2020. REUTERS/Yves Herman

 

BRUSSELS/GENEVA (Reuters) - The European Commission said on Monday that it would contribute to an initiative led by the World Health Organization to buy COVID-19 vaccines, while the WHO said Germany had joined the pact and that the agency was still negotiating with the bloc.

 

The Commission, announcing that it would provide 400 million euros ($478 million) in guarantees, did not clarify whether EU states would acquire shots through the WHO scheme.

 

"Germany has joined the COVAX facility today," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Gheybreyesus told a news conference in Geneva without elaborating the terms.

 

"And also we're negotiating with the rest of EU members. One possibility we are checking is for the EU members to join as a bloc. I think the best way to end this pandemic is through solidarity, through cooperation, through oneness," Tedros added.

 

The COVAX initiative aims to purchase for all countries in the world 2 billion doses of potential COVID-19 shots from several vaccine makers by the end of 2021.

 

The EU financial support will be provided through guarantees, the Commission said. A spokeswoman for the EU executive did not clarify how these guarantees would be offered and why they were preferred to direct funding in cash.

 

"Today, the Commission is announcing a 400 million euro contribution to COVAX for working together in purchasing future vaccines to the benefit of low and middle income countries," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.

 

The EU Commission is negotiating advance purchases of COVID-19 vaccines with several drugmakers on behalf of the 27 EU states and has previously said that EU governments cannot buy vaccines through parallel procurement schemes.

 

Asked whether its guidance to EU states not to buy vaccines through COVAX was now dropped, a commission spokeswoman declined to elaborate.

 

"The detailed terms and conditions for the EU's participation and contribution will be worked out in the coming days and weeks," the Commission said.

 

The Commission added in a statement that it was ready, together with EU states, "to put expertise and resources at work within COVAX to accelerate and scale-up development and manufacturing of a global supply of vaccines for citizens across the world, in poor and rich countries."

 

Critics have said that by buying vaccines exclusively through an EU scheme, the Commission was effectively undermining the WHO-led initiative.

 

The Commission said it was committed to donating to developing countries some of the vaccines it buys through its procurement scheme.

 

At least 172 countries have registered expressions of interest in COVAX, including 92 low- and middle-income countries eligible to secure doses through the GAVI vaccine alliance which covers much of their cost. Some 80 self-financing countries have also submitted expressions of interest and must make firm commitments by Sept. 18.

 

The United States, Japan, Britain and the EU have struck their own deals to secure millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses for their citizens, ignoring the WHO's warnings that "vaccine nationalism" will squeeze supplies.

 

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio in Brussels and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by John Chalmers, Andrew Heavens, William Maclean and Giles Elgood)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-09-01

 

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[ukrules]

They're going to end up buying the UK vaccine, especially if they want something that works.

[scammed]

so it was a lust for kickbacks that was behind the knee jerk reaction after all

[Scott]

Conspiracy post reported and removed. 

 

[wombat]

Thats the political narrative....
Now lets have the medical narrative from the bloke who is hacking up the bodies to see what really happens...
Your choice, the political narrative or the medical narrative...
Up to you.

[Bender Rodriguez]

blowing tax payers money on a vaccine that is not even out of phase 3 trials

 

well, it is not their money and they have golden salaries, so they don't care

[2 is 1]

Who start this "game"? Was that some potus? Who knows potus know's everything!

[bartender100]

12 hours ago, ukrules said:

They're going to end up buying the UK vaccine, especially if they want something that works.

You are right, this is the only one I would trust if I needed a shot to be able to travel

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8684869/AstraZeneca-begins-final-trials-Oxford-University-coronavirus-vaccine-enrolling-50-000-people.html

[Seik]

Now we get to the heart of why governments and the EU have been treating the virus the way they have. The vaccine is not the remedy, it is their cash-in end goal. Executive powers are pawns to the pharmaceutical lobbies, the influence of the latter on the former date back long before the virus was known, so none of it is really a surprise.

[ukrules]

41 minutes ago, Seik said:

Now we get to the heart of why governments and the EU have been treating the virus the way they have.

I would like to know the answer to this as well, specifically I'd like to know exactly what they're basing their expectations on.

 

These seasoned medical veterans wouldn't model it on the flu because this is not in any way a flu virus so they must be looking at the other coronaviruses - the colds when making their predictions.

 

It's definitely nothing to do with anything you proposed in your above post, that's pure drivel.

 

[Seik]

23 minutes ago, ukrules said:

that's pure drivel.

 

Meanwhile, the WHO's biggest donator is one of the richest man on the planet (Bill Gates, who's extremely invested in making a vaccine), and all truly scientific reasonings prove that the virus should in no way stop the world from functioning the way it always has, governments choose to deliberately ignore that in favor of shills to spread panic; enforcing strong restrictions all across the board, while funding vaccine research by pumping hundreds of millions of tax payers money into it, presenting it like our long-awaited saviour. But yeah, saying the pharmaceutical lobbies have considerable influence over governments is pure drivel.

Edited September 1, 2020 by Seik

[ukrules]

6 minutes ago, Seik said:

Meanwhile, the WHO's biggest donator is one of the richest man on the planet (Bill Gates, who's extremely invested in making a vaccine), and all truly scientific reasonings prove that the virus should in no way stop the world from functioning the way it always has, governments choose to deliberately ignore that and spread panic; enforcing strong restrictions all across the board, while funding vaccine research by pumping hundreds of millions of tax payers money into it. But yeah, pure drivel.

You talk about vaccine research as if it's a bad thing, it's very generous of Bill Gates to donate so much of his money into vaccine research over the years, especially when it comes to diseases which have little to no consequence to the modern (rich) parts of the world.

 

Of course what he's spent in the past made up for lack of government spending but I can assure you the governments of the world have dwarfed anything Gates has ever done this year alone due to the COVID situation.

 

Edited September 1, 2020 by ukrules

[Seik]

27 minutes ago, ukrules said:

Of course what he's spent in the past made up for lack of government spending but I can assure you the governments of the world have dwarfed anything Gates has ever done this year alone due to the COVID situation.

 

The problem is that governments all over the world are basing their decisions on the WHO's analysis which is largely funded by a pro-vaccine benefactor, the WHO is not impartial the way it should be. They have FINANCIAL INCENTIVE to paint the virus as something that should stop the world's economy, because if this postulate is accepted, the only logical thing to do is indeed to make a vaccine at all costs to solve the problem. If you can't see how that's <deleted> up, I don't know what to tell you. It also shows that there's nothing "generous" as you claim about Bill Gates' actions, he is merely exerting his influence on the world through his money.

Edited September 1, 2020 by Seik

[Scott]

If you are going to make claims, then you need to back them up with a link to a credible source.   If not, it's either a conspiracy or untrue.  

 

 

[welovesundaysatspace]

7 hours ago, wombat said:

Thats the political narrative....
Now lets have the medical narrative from the bloke who is hacking up the bodies to see what really happens...
Your choice, the political narrative or the medical narrative...
Up to you.

“The blokes who are hacking up the bodies to see what really happens” (Bundesver­band Deutscher Pathologen, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Pathologie, and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Neuropathologie und Neuroanatomie, see here in German: https://www.aerzteblatt.de/nachrichten/115799/COVID-19-bei-Mehrzahl-der-Betroffenen-auch-die-Todesursache?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook) found that in 86% Covid was the direct cause of death. But keep spinning your conspiracy theories of a “political narrative” by cherry-picking single observations while others do broad studies. 
 

 

 

Edited September 1, 2020 by welovesundaysatspace

[Anton9]

Useless waste of money, with that amount of money you can feed millions of starving kids in poor countries