The COVID-19 pandemic has had massive global health and economic repercussions and continues to impact countries worldwide. The vaccine development community has made tremendous progress in developing a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, and early data suggest that a vaccine may be licensed as early as this year. The subsequent global deployment of what will likely be more than one vaccine product will require a level of planning, coordination, and effort that has never been undertaken by the vaccine introduction community. Previous large-scale vaccine introductions (e.g., IPV) have benefitted from dedicated program management resources to track introduction work plans and program readiness.
The ACT-Accelerator was established as a global collaboration to accelerate the development, production, and equitable access to new COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines. The vaccine component to the ACT-A accelerator is called COVAX and is working to accelerate the licensure, largescale production, and delivery of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines. The proposed investment will support global vaccine delivery efforts, including access, introduction, and scale of COVID-19 vaccines with a particular focus on countries eligible for the COVAX AMC. The initiative seeks proposals from organizations to play a supporting project management role in the development of a cohesive introduction and delivery plans. The selected organization will help coordinate and drive the implementation of the plan with all key stakeholders within COVAX Country Readiness and Delivery (CRaD) workstream, and nested working groups (WGs). The grant period is expected to be two years.