COVID-19 has high-lighted the importance of speed and access in vaccine research. With this awakening, the UK will host a summit with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to raise funds for vaccine research and development. The intent is to speed up vaccine development further and prevent future pandemics.
CEPI is hoping to be able to reduce vaccine development time by two/thirds, producing viable vaccines within 100 days. Even moreso, they want to ensure plans are in place to enable equitable access to these vaccines globally. CEPI had recently released a 5-year strategy to reduce (dare we say, eliminate) the future risk of pandemics, saving millions of lives and preventing trillions in economic damage.
CEPI was founded in 2017, made of partnerships between numerous public, private, philanthropic, and civil organisations. Prior to COVID-19, they were developing vaccines for other widespread viruses including Ebola, Lassa, and MERS. They then helped create COVAX AMC, who has shipped over 49 million COVID-19 vaccines to 120 countries and territories. The summit will hopefully further enhance CEPI, and the world’s, abilities to mitigate future outbreaks.
The summit is set to take place in 2022, thought the date is not yet set.