Luxembourg's Directorate for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs and the Ministry of Health have announced that the Grand Duchy is donating 350,000 vaccines to the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) initiative.
On Friday 2 July 2021, Luxembourg's Government Council decided to donate COVID-19 vaccines to the COVAX facility via the European vaccine sharing mechanism.
The Grand Duchy will make an initial donation of 350,000 vaccines (Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and mRNA vaccines) for the benefit of its cooperation partner countries, the distribution of which remains to be determined.
By the end of June 2021, European Union (EU) member states had shared more than 2.5 million vaccine doses with third countries through COVAX and the EU Civil Protection Mechanism.
In order to limit the risks of pandemic outbreaks and the spread of variants, the World Health Organization (WHO) has called for a massive global effort to vaccinate at least 10% of the population of each country by September 2021 and at least 30% by end of the year, representing the need for a total of 250 million vaccine doses. Currently, a total of 14% of the world's population has received at least one dose of the vaccine. However, this percentage is distributed unevenly from one country to another.
To put a definitive end to the pandemic before the emergence of new multi-resistant variants, it is deemed imperative that 70 to 80% of the world population be immunised, either by recovering from the disease or through vaccination.
The donation of vaccines is thus considered not only to be a question of meeting the need for solidarity in terms of access to vaccines, but also of guaranteeing security for all at the global level.
