The government is planning to join an international framework to jointly purchase vaccines for the novel coronavirus, potentially securing vaccines for up to 25 million people in Japan, government sources said Tuesday.
The framework is being designed under the leadership of entities such as the World Health Organization and Gavi, an international organization that supports vaccination in developing countries. Participating countries will make advance payments for contracts with pharmaceutical companies to secure vaccines for up to 20% of their populations.
The deadline for countries to announce their intention to join the framework is the end of this month, and 75 countries, including Japan, Britain, Canada and Norway, expressed interest. Gavi has reached a basic agreement with British major drugmaker AstraZeneca, and is considering several other companies as candidates for suppliers of the vaccines. The total amount of the framework's purchase is expected to be between 20 billion dollars and 40 billion dollars.
Participating countries will also shoulder more than 2 billion dollars to distribute the vaccines secured by the framework for developing countries, in addition to the cost of the vaccines for their own countries. Japan is expected to cover 100 million dollars of the total 2 billion dollars.
The success rate of vaccine development is low, and thus it is essential to sign contracts with several companies to secure a sufficient amount of vaccines. The government decided to take part in the new framework, believing that existing agreements to purchase the vaccines from AstraZeneca and Pfizer Inc. are not enough.
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