Billion-dollar pneumonia vaccine fund closes after first non-Western firm wins tender. Donors transfer remaining money to COVID19

Over 12 years donors have granted more than USD 1 billion in subsidies to the two Western pneumonia vaccine producers, GSK and Pfizer, from an aid-financed fund called the AMC. Two days after India’s Serum Institute signed a Gavi contract to supply a new and much cheaper vaccine, breaking this global duopoly, donors pulled out all remaining funds from the AMC and transferred them to a new fund for COVID19.