About
A joint initiative from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank Group, World Health Organization, and World Trade Organization to accelerate access to COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics by leveraging multilateral finance and trade solutions, particularly for low- and middle-income countries.
The Task Force, led by the Heads of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank Group (WBG), World Health Organization (WHO) and World Trade Organization (WTO), was announced on June 30, 2021.
The overall goal of the Task Force is to support delivery of COVID-19 tools to low-and middle-income countries and to mobilize relevant stakeholders and national leaders to remove critical finance and trade roadblocks. To this end, the Task Force will be working closely with the ecosystem of public and private actors working in this area.
As an urgent first step, the Task Force has called on G20 countries to (1) embrace the target of vaccinating at least 40 percent of the population in every country by end-2021, and at least 60 percent by the first half of 2022, (2) share more vaccine doses now, including by ensuring at least 1 billion doses are shared with low- and middle-income countries in 2021 through COVAX starting immediately, (3) provide financing, including grants and concessional financing, to close the residual gaps, including for the ACT-Accelerator, and (4) remove all barriers to export of inputs and finished vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics and other barriers to supply chain operations.
In addition, to enhance transparency, the Task Force will compile data on dose requests (by type and quantity), contracts, deliveries (including through donations), and deployments of COVID-19 vaccines to low- and middle-income countries—and make it available as part of a shared country-level dashboard. The Task Force will support efforts of ACT-Accelerator and partners to address gaps in readiness, so countries are positioned to receive, deploy, and administer vaccines, tests and treatments.