CEPI and IVI announce new research program to expand access to COVID-19 vaccines in Africa The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) today announced a new programme of clinical research which aims to expand access to COVID-19 vaccines in Africa. CEPI will provide funding of up to $12.7m to the Expanding Access and Delivery of COVID-19 Vaccines in Africa (ECOVA) consortium led by IVI to carry out clinical trials of Sinopharm's BBIBP-CorV vaccine which will support the expanded use of the vaccine on the African continent. Up to 170 million doses of BBIBP-CorV will be distributed by the COVAX Facility under an agreement announced on 12 July 2021, and the vaccine is already being deployed in over 50 countries around the world. However there have been no clinical trials of BBIBP-CorV in African populations or against the variants of concern circulating in southern Africa. The ECOVA research programme aims to generate crucial data to inform the use of the vaccine in Africa, and potentially expand use of the vaccine to HIV-infected individuals. All results generated by ECOVA will be made available open source to inform policy makers and regulatory authorities' recommendations on the use of BBIBP-CorV in national immunization programmes.