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.