ACT-Accelerator launches six-month plan as world moves to long-term control of COVID-19

• The plan sets out key partnership priorities and ways of working as countries transition to managing COVID-19 as a long-term public health issue
• The plan is focused on vaccinating high-risk populations, introducing new treatments, encouraging testing and ensuring continued access to tools for COVID-19
• The Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator is a global collaboration to accelerate the development, production and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines.

The Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator today launches its plan for the next six months, setting out how, as a partnership of global health agencies working together with government, civil society and other partners, it will support countries in the world’s transition to long-term control of COVID-19. 19.

Recognizing the evolving nature of the COVID-19 virus and the pandemic, the plan outlines changes to ACT-A’s settings and ways of working to ensure that countries continue to have access to tools for COVID-19 in the long term, while maintaining the coalition’s readiness to help address future waves diseases.

Developed through a consultative process with ACT-A agencies, donors, industry partners, civil society organizations (CSOs) and members of the Executive Council, the plan summarizes priority areas of focus for partnership pillars, coordination mechanisms and other key functions and highlights work for sustainment, transition, sunset or holding on standby. The transition plan supports the work of ACT-A agencies as they develop the funding, implementation and direction of their efforts to combat the disease COVID-19.

The next phase of the ACT-A partners’ work will focus on three overarching areas:

• Focusing on research and development (R&D) and market shaping activities to provide a pipeline for new and improved tools for COVID-19
• Ensuring institutional arrangements for continued access by all countries to vaccines, tests and treatments for COVID-19, including oxygen
• Concentration in the country work to introduce new products (e.g. new oral antivirals for those at highest risk) and protect priority populations (e.g. full vaccination of healthcare workers and the elderly), in support of national and international goals

“As the world moves towards long-term management of COVID-19, ACT-A will continue to support countries by providing access to vaccines, tests and treatments,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “But as this plan goes on, we still have a lot of work to do to achieve equitable access to these life-saving tools, with healthcare professionals and at-risk populations as our top priority.”

Other changes outlined in the plan include a transition to a new ACT-A Monitoring and Oversight Working Group, co-chaired by senior Indian and US officials, with a political-level Relief Council going into ‘standby’, with the capacity to reactivate if necessary due to the increase in serious illness.

ACT-A agencies have initiated resource mobilization efforts and this plan sets out the transition to partnership-level core funding and resource mobilization into the regular work of each agency going forward. Based on the three overarching areas of work outlined above, existing financial commitments and the country’s demand for tools, ACT-A agencies need an estimated $400 million for their transition work over the next six months. The ACT-A Center will continue to provide a transparent overview of the funding situation of ACT-A agencies during this period.

ACT-Accelerator is the only end-to-end solution in the world to accelerate development and equal access to vaccines, tests and treatments for COVID-19. This partnership has been instrumental in facilitating access to COVID-19 countermeasures for low- and lower-middle-income countries throughout the pandemic, specifically:

• Providing more than 1.8 billion doses of vaccines to 146 countries and territories – including 75% of vaccines distributed in low-income countries and the majority of doses delivered to Africa – through COVAX, the vaccine pillar led by CEPI, Gavi, WHO and UNICEF.
• Delivering over 161 million tests, more than halving the cost of rapid tests to less than $1 per test, and supplying about 80% of the tests used in Africa in the first year of the pandemic through the Diagnostic Pillar led by FIND and the Global Fund.
• Delivering over 40 million courses of treatment for COVID-19, investing an unprecedented US$1 billion to expand sustainable access to oxygen in LMICs and launching the delivery of new antiviral medicines, through the Therapeutics Pillar, led by the Global Fund, Unitaid and Wellcome.
• Delivering more than 2 billion pieces of personal protective equipment (PPE), supporting health systems to deliver COVID-19 tools and strengthening their laboratories, waste management and processing capacity, through the Health Systems and Response Connector, led by the Global Fund, WHO and the World Bank.

The transition plan can be accessed here.

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