The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, via its Strategic Investment Fund, will provide at-risk funding of USD 150 million to Gavi, which will be used to support the Serum Institute of India (SII) to manufacture the potential vaccine candidates and for future procurement of vaccines for low- and middle-income countries via Gavi’s COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC), the statement said

The disease is now widespread outside metropolitan areas, said Bhramar Mukherjee, professor at the School of Public Health, University of Michigan. “We need commitment and collective sacrifice from people of rural India to keep contact diaries, symptom diaries, and to not feel stigmatized if they test positive or have symptoms, so that the disease does not infest villages like an enemy in the dark.”