Dear Sebastian

Many thanks for your e-mail and willingness to assist in resolving COVID 19 vaccination related concerned. The Ministry received the COVAX letter explaining the reasons for delay. We will have the call with the Pfizer and COVAX colleagues this week to discuss next steps. Pfizer’s IN&L agreement and a side letter both will be signed and sent back to Pfizer shortly.

We may approach you for your advice in the coming days.

With kind regards .

პატივისცემით,

თამარ გაბუნია

მინისტრის პირველი მოადგილე

Sincerely,

Tamar Gabunia, MD, MPH

First Deputy Minister

Dear Ivane, Dear Eka –

Just a quick update on the first issue raised below and sorry for omitting to copy you Eka and Tamar into the original correspondence. 

Please note that Levent and colleagues met with the WB liaison at GAVI/ COVAX today to understand how the WB can support Georgia to alleviate the identified bottleneck in indemnity & legal status, and regulatory status. As you will know (I believe the letter explaining the delays was sent to the Ministry of Health today), the delays in the delivery of the agreed doses targeted for Q1 are related with Pfizer’s additional due diligence requirements which are over and above the readiness assessment.  The COVAX facility has not received any updates from Pfizer form last Wednesday, but to accelerate a solution, the COVAX Facility sent letters (on February 22) to you to facilitate bilateral conversations with Pfizer and arranging tripartite meetings with the participation of COVAX Facility focal points.

Note that we have experience on helping to resolve these issues and can share lessons-learned with you.  Please reach out to the team (Nino, Volkan, Levent) for further assistance and help. 

Dear Ivane, Niko –

I appreciate that this is a busy time for you, but I wished to reach out to you re. three important issues concerning Georgia’s vaccination roll-out:

1. To begin with, I have heard that there may be some issue raised by COVAX with respect to the upcoming first shipment of Pfizer vaccine this week.  As a result, the shipment could be delayed.  It appears that COVAX may have an issue with respect to the legal and indemnity insurance.  Our team in DC is reaching out to COVAX to better understand the issue(s) and please let us know if you hear anything and how we can help!

2. On this related now, now that we have the formal request and are preparing the AF for vaccines project, I would like to suggest that we meet to discuss how the WB can help you with our hands-on procurement support.  It would be helpful to know with whom we should liaise as I understand that multiple parties are involved (MoFA, MoF, MoH, PM’s office).  Perhaps it makes sense to organize a meeting between WB and government experts on this?   Could you help organize the parties on the government side? 

3. Finally, please find below the tentative timeline for the project preparation.   Can you please advise if this timeline works for MoF.

Thank you and kind regards,

Sebastian

Sebastian Molineus
Regional Director for the South Caucasus
Europe and Central Asia
T  +995 (32) 291 6238
M +995 (577) 78 7821
M +1 (202) 492-3914
E  smolineus@worldbank.org
W www.worldbank.org/en/region/eca

 @smolineus

www.linkedin.com/in/molineus/