Your Excellency, 

Thank you for submitting your Expression of Interest to join the COVAX Facility.  

I am writing to invite you to the Country Consultation taking place on 16 and 17 of July from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM CET hosted by Gavi, CEPI and WHO with all self-financing governments that have expressed their interest in joining the Facility. This is a fast-moving effort tacking an unprecedented global epidemic. We will come with as many answers as we have, but for some of these issues we will need to co-create.   

We are pleased to share that we have more than 70 self-financing countries that have submitted Expressions of Interest and expect a good turnout for the consultation. We will be able to accommodate a Head of Delegation + up to 3 from each country. We recommend that the delegation include your highest-level technical expert focused on securing COVID-19 vaccine domestically, plus representation from other relevant ministries including health, foreign affairs and finance, as appropriate. We ask, however, that only the Head of Delegation speak during the session to help us manage the participation of so many countries. Please note that we are keeping this meeting as a working meeting. We have a lot of content to cover and no formal introductions will be required. We have provided a high-level agenda for the two-day session below and we will be sharing some brief pre-reading material on Wednesday 15 July for participants’ review ahead of the consultation. 

Please send us the First Name, Last Name and email addresses of your delegation to covax@gavi.org by Wednesday, 15 July and we will share the details for joining the meeting with the delegation. 

The meeting will be held under Chatham House Rules meaning that none of the questions or discussion will be attributable to a specific country or person to allow for frank and honest discourse among the group.  

Finally, for transparency reasons and to show the growing momentum for a global solution, we will put out a notice of the meeting on 16 July and would like to include the list of all countries that have formally submitted an Expression of Interest to join the Facility. For this we would kindly ask you to provide your consent by Wednesday, 15 July 10:00 AM CET. Please note that the name of your country will not be published without your prior consent. 

·         Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance 

·         Dr. Richard Hatchett, CEO, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) 

·         Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist, World Health Organisation 

·         Welcome & objectives of the consultation 

·         Review of the agenda for both days & housekeeping 

·         Scene-setting, end-to-end view of the COVAX effort 

·         Facility overview and benefits of pooled procurement (the demand side) 

·         COVAX candidates and the actively managed portfolio (the supply side) 

·         Deals with manufacturers 

·         Manufacturer support for Facility and perspective on the approach  

·         Participant Discussion 

·         Policy recommendations, safety & monitoring   

·         Allocation     

·         Participant discussion 

·         Welcome and recap from Day 

·         Participant discussion/ overflow questions from Day 1 

·         Overview of the different agreements   

·         Financial commitments of countries 

·         Non-financial commitments of countries 

·         Draft term sheets for countries  

·         Participant discussion 

·         Governance 

·         Development of investors/participants council 

·         Participant discussion 

·         What to expect – between now and 31 Aug 

·         Final questions/comments to wrap-up the consultation