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The Tech Mahindra team along with its CSR arm Tech Mahindra foundation have stepped forward to support communities across India.

To combat the consequences of the pandemic, Tech Mahindra Foundation team is relentlessly working to direct the support towards the most vulnerable population including Healthcare workers, Security Personnel, Sanitation Workers, Migrant Workers, and more/

The team has forged partnerships with #OxygenForIndia to deploy 3,000 oxygen concentrators and 40,000 oxygen cylinders to help resolve the oxygen crisis in India. Tech Mahindra Foundation and Mission Oxygen are also working together to set up 50 Oxygen Plants for Charitable and Government Hospitals across India.

Tech Mahindra has also set up information and infrastructure initiatives such as COVID care centers at campuses across cities, appointing a wellness officer, vaccination drives for employees, tele-calling support to NGOs and created COVID SOS applications to ensure timely availability of verified information for those in need.

Maker’s Lab, the innovation team at Tech M, is working on multiple innovations such as; drug molecule research to potentially attack coronavirus with Reagene Biosciences, Protein Folding Research, Predictive Tool - SEIR Modelling, Covid-19 Chat-bot, WhatsApp SOS Seva and a product prototype for frugal oxygen generation (product development underway).

Moderna has announced it is making new funding commitments to increase supply at its owned and partnered manufacturing facilities.

Moderna expects to increase global 2022 capacity to up to 3 billion doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, depending upon the mix between the authorized Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine at the 100 μg dose level and potentially lower doses of the Company’s variant booster candidates and pediatric vaccines, if authorized.

The Company will use its cash balance to fund these investments.

Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna said, "As we follow the rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, we believe that there will continue to be significant need for our mRNA COVID-19 vaccine and our variant booster candidates into 2022 and 2023. We are hearing from governments that there is no technology that provides the high efficacy of mRNA vaccines and the speed necessary to adapt to variants, while allowing reliable scalability of manufacturing.

"Today we have announced that our investments in Europe, including Spain, France and Belgium, Switzerland, and the US will allow us to deliver up to 3 billion doses in 2022, depending on the mix of product between primary series of vaccination and variant boosters. We thank our manufacturing partners for their work and their commitment."

Ipsos surveyed over 21,000 people in 28 countries and found strong support (78%) for requiring travellers to carry COVID passports. The strongest support was in Malaysia and Peru where 92% and 90% of people backed vaccine passports for travel.

The Commons Project Foundation and the World Economic Forum has announced the global expansion of the CommonTrust Network (www.commontrustnetwork.org) to cover 32 countries spanning Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania and the Americas.

The CommonTrust Network enables governments and other destinations to trust the sources of the health data in a traveler’s health pass app or QR code.

As countries seek to relax border restrictions, quarantines and lock-downs, they need a more reliable, trustworthy and efficient way to validate the health status of incoming travelers.

Even with low passenger volumes, airports around the world have been plagued with long lines as airline staff and border guards scrutinize easily forged paper-based test and vaccination certificates.

Health pass apps and QR codes can help, but only if the test results or vaccination records they contain are verifiable and come from trusted sources.

Business Roundtable today launched “Move the Needle,” a campaign to support the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, increase vaccine uptake and encourage individuals to continue to wear masks and take other precautions as the vaccination effort is underway.

Business Roundtable companies have been “moving the needle” by producing, distributing and administering the vaccine. The launch of “Move the Needle” captures the business community’s continued efforts to end the COVID-19 pandemic and reinvigorate the US economy.

From testing to providing fact-based information, CVSHealth is a leading provider of COVID-19 vaccinations.

CVS Pharmacy is administering the COVID-19 vaccine based on state and local jurisdiction eligibility guidelines, in a very limited number of locations. It will play a prominent role in administering the COVID-19 vaccine to the general public as it is rolled out further.

Ipsos continues to conduct research among consumers, healthcare professionals and other stakeholders to understand the dynamics around COVID-19 vaccines – and hence, the future outlook – through the eyes of society, markets and people.

A.P. Møller-Maersk is funnelling efforts into transporting approved vaccines safely to destinations in need.

But not at the cost of day-to-day trade.

Food supply chains are equally essential and continue to rely on temperature-controlled services to deliver products in perfect condition.

Maersk is thinking through every COVID-19 vaccine distribution in a manner that optimizes resources and eliminates the possibility of overloading systems at the destination. The logistics leader does this by working backwards - understanding a community’s current Pharmaceutical and Healthcare capabilities before designing a flow of goods. And making sure that none of its resources are ever tied up for too long, by orchestrating just-in-time deliveries.

As pioneers in temperature-controlled logistics, Maersk's Pharma team provides guidance, from factory to pharmacy.

Read more.

Sanofi and BioNTech have today entered into an agreement under which Sanofi will support manufacturing and supply of BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine which is being co-developed with Pfizer.

Sanofi will provide BioNTech access to its established infrastructure and expertise to produce over 125 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine in Europe. Initial supplies will originate from Sanofi’s production facilities in Frankfurt from summer of 2021.

“We are very conscious that the earlier vaccine doses are available, the more lives can potentially be saved. Today’s announcement is a pivotal step towards our industry’s collective goal of putting all the effort in to curb this pandemic,” said Paul Hudson, Chief Executive Officer, Sanofi.

“Although vaccination campaigns have started around the world, the ability to get shots into arms is being limited by lower than expected supplies and delayed approval timelines owing to production shortages. We have made the decision to support BioNTech and Pfizer in manufacturing their COVID-19 vaccine in order to help address global needs, given that we have the technology and facilities to do so. As always, our top priority is to focus our efforts and capabilities on fighting this global pandemic. First and foremost, we will do this by continuing to develop our own COVID-19 vaccines candidates, in parallel with this industrial cooperation.”

In support of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) COVAX initiative and its efforts to equitably distribute two billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines in 2021, the Dubai Vaccines Logistics Alliance combines the expertise and global reach of Emirates airline with DP World’s worldwide network of ports and logistics operations, along with the infrastructure of Dubai Airports and International Humanitarian City to distribute vaccines worldwide. The distribution will particularly focus on emerging markets, where populations have been hard-hit by the pandemic, and pharmaceutical transport and logistics are challenging.

The alliance is working with a broader set of stakeholders including pharmaceutical manufacturers, forwarders, government agencies and other entities for transportation of vaccines.

18 CEOs from the shipping, airlines and logistics industry sign vaccine-delivery charter with UNICEF

The unprecedented magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic requires innovative and bold collective action from multinational organizations, governments and industries. To facilitate this, the Forum launched 17 Industry Action Groups to address both the impacts of COVID-19, and to craft new principles for resilience.

Recognizing the impact of multi-stakeholder collaborative action, 18 shipping, airlines and logistics industry CEOs - the members of the Supply Chain & Transport Industry Action Group community - have signed a charter to express their strong support for achieving globally inclusive, safe and sustainable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.

The Charter supports the COVAX participant countries, and is co-signed by the Executive Director of UNICEF and the President of the World Economic Forum. Signatories intend to support UNICEF and COVAX countries with planning, preparedness and prioritized transportation and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and related supplies, subject to internal regulations, in four main ways:

1. Engage with governments, customs authorities, UNICEF and other UN Agencies, and NGOs

2. Participate in operational asset and competency sharing

3. Assign expertise to support governments, where requested by UNICEF

4. Support UNICEF’s Global Vaccine Logistics Distribution for COVID-19, with prioritization and solutions for international and in-country distribution of vaccines and related supplies on behalf of the COVAX facility.

The Microsoft Vaccination Management platform includes a growing collection of vaccination specific solutions from Microsoft and our partner ecosystem.

They are designed to enable and extend an organization’s vaccination management capabilities and create end-to-end experiences for citizens, front-line vaccine administrators, and healthcare providers. Those offers can enable registration and prioritized scheduling of appointments, optimize material management by streamlining automatic replenishment of supplies, track-and-trace monitoring of prescriptions and medical supply deliveries, and streamline reporting to help public health systems stay focused on getting the vaccines, resources, and services where and when they’re needed.

Using data and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions can provide actionable insights that enable public health and government officials to make informed policy decisions, improve vaccination education, and help avoid supply disruption.

Most recently, The National Covid Vaccination Registration Platform for the 45 million eligible citizens in the UK is built via an Azure web form and hosted on Azure. As part of the overall service, System C, hosted and managed the National Immunisation Management System (NIMS) on Azure, also integrating with Primary Care and National Health Systems (NHS) nationally, using Power BI for reporting.

Simplus, an Infosys company, is collaborating with Salesforce for a vaccine management cloud solution built on the Salesforce Platform in support of Salesforce Work.com for Vaccines as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

Combining Simplus’ resources, capabilities, and Salesforce consulting and product expertise, the companies have created an end-to-end vaccine management solution to help support the federal government’s mandate for states to be ready to distribute a coronavirus vaccine.

In a public/private partnership, MTN, Africa’s leading mobile network, has announced a donation of US$25 million to support the African Union’s COVID-19 vaccination programme.

The donation will help secure up to seven million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for health workers across the continent, which will contribute to the vaccination initiative of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

On a global scale logistics providers are challenged to establish the rapid medical supply chain rapidly to deliver more than 10bn doses worldwide – also in regions with less developed logistics infrastructures. To provide global coverage of the next two years, up to 200k pallet shippers and 15m cooling boxes as well as 15k flights will be required across the various supply chain setups.

With an aircraft fleet of more than 260 dedicated planes, numerous partner airlines and a hub and gateway network spanning more than 220 countries and territories DHL is prepared for a worldwide supply of COVID-19 vaccines.

We are supporting Moderna and other vaccine manufacturers with process optimization for key raw materials used in the manufacturing of nucleic acid vaccines.

This type of vaccine—such as those being developed by Moderna and Pfizer—have emerged as an exciting new modality given their rapid development timelines and emerging data indicating high efficacy.

However, nucleic acid vaccines require a different manufacturing process and have never been produced at the scale required to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Ginkgo’s work to date has created processes that can significantly increase the number of doses achievable with each manufacturing run.

Read more here.