As part of the European Union's efforts to support vaccination in partner countries, the Commission yesterday increased from €40 million to €75 million its assistance package to deploy safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines and speed up the vaccination campaigns in the six Eastern Partnership countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Republic of Moldova and Ukraine.

With this new €35 million assistance package the EU seeks to substantially increase access to vaccines in the Eastern Partnership region amid the global vaccine shortage, facilitating the vaccine sharing by the EU Member States and reimbursing the cost. This assistance complements the EU's support to the COVAX initiative, the world's facility to ensure fair and universal access to COVID-19 vaccines, and work towards an equitable and transparent distribution of vaccines over the Eastern Partner countries.

It comes in addition to the first package of support worth €40 million, launched in February to immediately strengthen preparedness and local readiness for safe and effective vaccination of the population, in partnership with the World Health Organization. EU support included training of health managers and medical staff involved in the vaccination campaign, key logistical support for the delivery and handling of the vaccines and supplies, vaccination data and safety monitoring, communication and community engagement, as well as support for the development of a digital COVID certificate.

The newly adopted programme is part of Team Europe's global COVID-19 response and builds on the joint efforts with the Member States and the EU cooperation with the WHO to date. It further builds on the first regional action to address the COVID-19 pandemic in the Eastern Partnership last year when the EU and WHO joined forces and launched the €35 million Solidarity for Health Initiative in the Eastern Partnership. The action provided substantial medical supplies across the region, including over 11 million items of personal protective equipment, 12,000 lab kits, over 1,500 ventilators, oxygen concentrators and pulse oximeters, and over 20,000 PCR testing kits.

The newly adopted package will support the effective deployment of vaccines received by the partner countries directly through the EU Vaccine Sharing Mechanism and indirectly through COVAX and direct procurement from producers of COVID-19 vaccines.

Team Europe is one of the lead contributors to COVAX with close to €3 billion for the COVAX Facility, which remains the key global vehicle to ensure fair and equitable access to these vaccines and delivers on international vaccine solidarity. To complement COVAX's efforts, Team Europe is aiming to donate at least 200 million doses to partner countries before the end of the year. A majority is expected to be delivered through COVAX.

Image © European Commission, 2021