The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), based in Norway, has welcomed a £160 million pledge from the UK Government to advance its work against the COVID-19 crisis and build the critical tools and partnerships needed to reduce, or even eliminate, future epidemic and pandemic threats.

The announcement comes ahead of the UK government hosting CEPI’s Global Pandemic Preparedness Summit on 7 to 8 March in London. The event aims to raise funds for CEPI’s goal, backed by the UK during its G7 presidency last year, to cut the time it takes to develop new vaccines to 100 days, including ‘variant-proof’ vaccines that will work against multiple future COVID-19 variants.

The UK government invested more than £88 million to support the development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. To date, the UK has also donated 32.2 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, of which 25.3 million have gone to COVAX, a global scheme to get more vaccines to developing countries.