VACCINE BET

New Zealand has placed its latest bet in the global race for a Covid19 vaccine, announcing a

$27 million deal that could cover half the country’s population.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said yesterday that Cabinet ministers had signed off on an agreement with the Covax global alliance, which is developing multiple possible vaccines.

New Zealand experts say there is great uncertainty, though international efforts to produce Covid19 vaccines have reached human trials and may begin to show positive results by the end of the year.

However, New Zealanders can’t expect to be vaccinated all at once, as ‘‘waves’’ of different vaccines will probably need to be acquired to cover most of the population.

Ardern, while announcing the country would climb down Covid19 alert levels in the coming week, said New Zealand would enter a legally binding agreement to buy any vaccine to emerge from the Covax Facility.

New Zealand said it would join the Covax Facility in July. It is run by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, a public-private organisation made up of members including the World Health Organisation, Unicef and the World Bank.

The Covax investment was part of the Government’s broader Covid-19 vaccine strategy.

‘‘The Covax Facility ensures that Covid-19 vaccines are equitably distributed to every participating country ... This investment will give us the option to purchase from a diverse portfolio of vaccine candidates should one be successful,’’ Ardern said.

She said Cabinet had set aside ‘‘hundreds of millions of dollars’’ to enter such arrangements.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters yesterday said the agreement signed was an initial ‘‘prepurchase’’.

‘‘The agreement will ensure that New Zealand receives enough vaccines to cover up to 50 per cent of the population of New Zealand and the Realm, which includes Tokelau, Cook Islands and Niue,’’ he said in a statement.

More funding would be required to buy so many vaccines, if the Covax Facility succeeds in producing one.

University of Otago Associate Professor James Ussher, director of the Government-backed Vaccine Alliance, said the domestic effort to develop a vaccine was in ‘‘full swing’’.

He said any vaccine produced in New Zealand would most likely be part of a second wave of treatments, as phase-three clinical trials, the final phase, of prospective vaccines were already under way overseas.