Chairperson Dr. Harsh Vardhan,

Director General Dr. Tedros, 

Distinguished delegates and colleagues,

I am speaking on behalf of Australia, Chile, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Switzerland, Singapore and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

We appreciate you keeping us informed on recent developments and ways forward in this important forum, as well as through weekly briefings.

We strongly believe that we would only overcome the global challenges we are facing through global solidarity and a commitment to multilateralism. The COVAX Facility, under the Vaccines Pillar of the ACT-Accelerator, is a true manifestation of this collaborative spirit. Our countries strongly support vaccine multilateralism and the goal of ensuring affordable, fair and equitable access to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines for all. 

We commend the World Health Organisation (WHO) for its collaborative work with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), to deliver this shared goal. 

We highly appreciate the WHO’s work to produce an Allocation Framework and Allocation Mechanism. We believe that the WHO’s global leadership, technical knowledge and expertise are fit for the task: guiding the equitable and fair allocation of vaccines once they become available. We would highlight a number of important questions that remain around the Allocation Framework, including:

• Whether and which parts of the final working draft of the WHO Allocation Framework will be further iterated and how Member States will be involved.
• How the methodology proposed for the risk assessment in Phase 2 of the allocation mechanism will be developed and agreed, ensuring both transparency and relevance of indicators measuring “threat” and “vulnerability”.

Lastly, bearing in mind that the WHO plans to provide us with updates later this month, we wish to receive further information on the governance of the Allocation Framework and the governance structure of the Allocation Mechanism, which determine the allocation of vaccines to shareholders of the COVAX Facility and COVAX AMC Eligible Economies. In particular, we wish to understand:

• What would be the composition and mandate of this governance structure?
• The steps that are being taken to avoid duplication in governance structures across the COVAX Facility initiative, and
• How COVAX Facility shareholders and COVAX AMC Eligible Economies would be involved in the design process of the Allocation Mechanism as it applies to COVAX? 

We would welcome any further clarification on these points now, and also propose a dedicated interactive session or sessions on the WHO Allocation Framework with COVAX Facility Shareholders and COVAX AMC Eligible Economies. We would welcome discussions with the WHO on a suitable timeline for this, to ensure timely operationalisation of the COVAX Facility.

We are also looking forward to receiving the “Explainer” on how the allocation of vaccines will be operationalised. Together we hope this will allow agreement to be achieved on a process of allocation that will support fair and equitable access for all to life-saving vaccines.

Australia, Chile, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Switzerland, Singapore and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland stand ready to further engage with the WHO and COVAX and look forward to further discussion.