ACT-Accelerator a year later

ACT-Accelerator marks its first anniversary today with a special progress report on the global alliance against the COVID-19 pandemic. “ACT NOW, ACT TOGETHER: 2021 Performance Report”Describes in detail the major scientific advances made in tackling the new disease, along with the historical collaboration of global health organizations, governments, foundations, civil society, scientists and the private sector.

A report launched at the event hosted by Dr. Tedros Adhanom, WHO Director-General, with remarks by Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa, and Dag Inge Ulstein, Minister of International Development for Norway, also shows the challenges ahead. , including large funding gaps that threaten to drive out progress against the pandemic.

“A year after the launch of the ACT Accelerator, world leaders are faced with a choice: to invest in saving lives by treating the cause of the pandemic everywhere, now, or to continue spending billions on consequences that have no end in sight,” said WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom. “With a remaining funding shortfall of $ 19 billion for 2021 and a limited supply of products, we can only stop the pandemic with funding, sharing and increasing access to the tools we need to fight disease. Now is the time to ACT. “

The ACT-Accelerator Alliance was launched on April 24, 2020 by the WHO, the European Commission, France and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop and deliver the tests, treatments and vaccines the world needs to combat COVID-19.

A year ago, the world was in a completely different place. Our collective understanding of COVID-19 was limited, and while we had polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing that could be performed in laboratories, there were no rapid tests, vaccines, and little was known about effective treatments. Today, there are rapid diagnostic tests, repurpose treatments, and vaccines. This scientific progress is rapid and unprecedented in scale and levels of collaboration.

But COVID-19 continues to expand and new variants are emerging as progress in the fair distribution of these tools has not been fast enough.

COVID-19 has killed more than 3 million people worldwide, another wave threatens many countries, and the unfair distribution of tests, treatments and vaccines allows the virus to accelerate and change – risking the effectiveness of our current disease-fighting tools. Left to rage anywhere, the virus threatens everywhere. Strengthened, globally coordinated efforts to ensure that all countries can access the tools they need are key to helping control this virus and that is why supporting the ACT-Accelerator partnership is so important.

“COVID-19 knows no borders,” said ACT special envoy Carl Bildt. “A new variant from anywhere could expose progress everywhere, even in a country that has achieved 100% vaccination. The pandemic is still on the rise. Only intensified global efforts to deliver tests, treatments and vaccines to all people everywhere based on needs rather than purchasing power will stop this pandemic. Ahead of the Global Health Summit, we call on the G20, G7 and increasingly wealthy countries to step up and pay their fair share to fund a global response.

Performance report

The rapid development of COVID-19 tools has been achieved thanks to the hard work and ingenuity of governments, global health organizations, scientists, the pharmaceutical industry, and manufacturers around the world. The ACT-Accelerator partnership has supported and helped launch many of these efforts. Today’s impact report Highlights the progress made by the partnership, including:

• Diagnostic Pillar – convened jointly by FIND and the Global Fund: Supported development and Emergency List of Reliable Antigen-Rapid Diagnostic Tests (Ag RDT) that can be performed outside the laboratory, guaranteed access to 120 million affordable rapid diagnostic tests, and procured 65 million tests (32.3 million molecular [PCR] tests and 32.8 million Ag RDT) for LMIC.
• Pillar of therapy – called together by Unitaid and Wellcome: Following over 300 effective trials, it supported the identification of dexamethasone as the first life-saving therapy against COVID-19, and 2.9 million doses of dexamethasone were available to LMICs less than 20 days after its identification. A Covid-19 Oxygen Emergency Task Force has been formed to meet the needs of more than half a million COVID-19 patients in LMICs who need oxygen therapy daily.
• COVAX – convened together CEPI, Gavi and WHO – in partnership with UNICEF: Over 2 billion doses were provided, with the first international delivery in Ghana 3 months after the first vaccine was administered in a high-income country, and more than 40 million doses were delivered to 119 farms through the COVAX Facility.
• Connector for Health Systems – led by the World Bank, WHO and the Global Fund – in partnership with UNICEF and the Global Fund to finance: LMICs were procured with $ 50 million in protective equipment and the readiness of countries to administer COVID-19 vaccines in more than 140 countries was estimated.

The development of these tools was the first, crucial step in controlling the pandemic. The need for improved tools and for getting the tools to those who need them most has never been more urgent. Securing funding remains a major challenge, but not the only one.

Vaccination to this extent and in this time frame represents the largest and most complex vaccine presentation in history. There are significant challenges in the production and delivery of such scales and timelines, with currently severe supply constraints characterizing the market. Of the more than 950 million vaccinations – only 0.3% have been applied in low-income countries. Test rates in high-income countries are approximately 70 times higher than rates in low-income countries, leaving many countries blind with little information and current rates of infection or the spread of new variants. People will continue to receive COVID-19 and so we need to rapidly intensify research to expand the range of effective treatments and deliver the PPE and oxygen needed to treat those in the hospital – as demand for overvoltage oxygen in many parts of the world.

An unprecedented mobilization of public, private and multilateral donors has been encouraged $ 14.1 billion in commitments so far, but as of today, The ACT-Accelerator partnership needs another $ 19 billion develop and deliver the tests, treatments and vaccines needed to bring COVID-19 under control and call on governments around the world to work with ACT-Accelerator partners to fund, share and increase the tools the world needs to bring to an end to the acute phase of the virus.

The International Chamber of Commerce estimates that the global economy will lose as much as $ 9.2 trillion if governments do not provide access to the economy with vaccines against COVID-19. Full funding for the ACT accelerator for 2021 would cost less than 1% of what governments spend on incentive packages to treat the effects of COVID-19.

Notes to editors

Access to COVID-19 Tools ACT-Accelerator is a proven, global collaboration that accelerates the development, production and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines. It was established in response to a call from G20 leaders in March 2020, and was launched by the WHO, the European Commission, France and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on April 24, 2020.

ACT-Accelerator is working to accelerate the joint efforts of existing organizations to end the pandemic. It is a collaborative framework designed to bring key players together at the table with a view to ending the pandemic as quickly as possible through accelerated development, equitable distribution and expanded delivery of tests, treatment and vaccines, protecting system health and rebuilding societies and economies in the short term. It draws on the experience of the world’s leading health organizations, which deal with the most difficult health challenges in the world and which can work together to unlock new and more ambitious results against COVID-19. Its members are committed to providing all people with access to all the tools needed to win COVID-19 and working with unprecedented levels of partnership to achieve it.

The ACT-Accelerator consists of four pillars: diagnostics, therapy, vaccines, and health system strengthening.

• The diagnostic pillar, convened jointly by the Global Fund and FIND, focuses on ensuring equal access to new and existing tests, supporting acceptance and introduction into countries, and strengthening the diagnostic portfolio by investing in cheap, easy-to-use and quality testing research and development. In 2021, it focused on the procurement and distribution of at least 900 million molecular and AG-RDTs to LMICs.
• Therapeutic pillar of water Unitaid and Wellcome. Therapists can play a role in all stages of COVID-19 disease: to prevent infection; suppress symptoms and spread the infection to others; treat or prevent symptoms; as a life-saving treatment for severe symptoms; and as a treatment that can speed recovery. The goal is to develop, manufacture and distribute millions of doses of treatment over the next 12 months, helping COVID-19 sufferers recover from the disease.
• The vaccine pillar, convened jointly by CEPI, Gavi and the WHO, is accelerating the search for an effective vaccine for all countries. At the same time, it supports capacity building and buys supplies ahead of time so that at least 2 billion doses can be fairly distributed to the world’s most prominent and highly exposed populations by the end of 2021.
• The Health Systems Connector Pillar, led by the World Bank, Global Fund, and WHO, works to ensure that these tools can reach the people who need them.
• Interconnecting all flows is an access and allocation workflow, led by the WHO.

As of April 2020, ACT-Accelerator supports the fastest, most consistent, and most successful global efforts in history in developing disease control tools. With significant advances in research and development by academia, the private sector, and government initiatives, ACT-Accelerator has enhanced our understanding of what works in the fight against disease. It has transformed our ability to fight COVID-19 globally: vaccines are being introduced around the world, cheap high-performance rapid diagnostic tests can now detect transmission anywhere, affordable severe disease therapy can save lives in any environment, and health systems are strengthening.