PARIS (AP) – In an industrial district on the outskirts of Bangladesh’s largest city is a factory with shiny new equipment imported from Germany, the spotless corridors with hermetically sealed chambers. It runs at only a quarter of its capacity.
It’s one of three factories that The Associated Press found on three continents, whose owners say they could produce hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccines in the short term if they had the blueprints and technical know-how. But that knowledge belongs to the big pharmaceutical companies that produce the first three vaccines approved by countries like Great Britain, the European Union and the US – Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. The factories are all still waiting for responses.
Across Africa and Southeast Asia, governments and aid agencies, as well as the World Health Organization, are calling on pharmaceutical companies to share their patent information more widely to fill a gaping global shortage in a pandemic that has already claimed more than 2.5 million livesPharmaceutical companies that have pulled tax money from the US or Europe to develop vaccinations at an unprecedented speed say they are negotiating contracts and exclusive licensing deals with manufacturers on a case-by-case basis because they need to protect their intellectual property and ensure safety.
Critics say this fragmented approach is just too slow at a time of urgent need to stop the virus before it mutates into even more deadly forms. The WHO called on vaccine manufacturers to share their know-how to “dramatically increase the global supply”.
“If that can be done, every continent will instantly have dozens of companies that can produce these vaccines overnight,” said Abdul Muktadir, whose Incepta plant in Bangladesh already makes vaccines against hepatitis, flu, meningitis, rabies, tetanus and the measles.
Around the world, the supply of coronavirus vaccines is lagging far behind demand and the limited amount available goes to rich countries. According to WHO, nearly 80% of vaccines have been administered in just 10 countries so far. More than 210 countries and territories with a combined population of 2.5 billion had not received a single shot since last week.
The deal-by-deal approach also means that some poorer countries end up paying more for the same vaccine than richer countries. South Africa, Mexico, Brazil and Uganda all pay different amounts per dose for the AstraZeneca vaccine – more than governments in the European Union, studies and publicly available documents show. AstraZeneca said the price of the vaccine will differ depending on factors such as manufacturing costs, where the shots are taken and how many countries are ordering.
“What we’re seeing today is a stampede, a survival of the fittest approach, where those with the deepest pockets, with the sharpest elbows, grab what is there and leave others behind,” said Winnie Byanyima, UNAIDS executive director.
In South Africa, home of the world’s most concerning COVID-19 variantthe Biovac plant has been saying for weeks that it has been negotiating with an unnamed manufacturer with no contract to show for it. And in Denmark, the Bavarian Scandinavian plant has spare capacity and the ability to make more than 200 million doses, but is also awaiting notification from the manufacturer of an approved coronavirus vaccine.
Governments and health experts offer two potential solutions to the vaccine shortage: one, supported by WHO, is a patent pool modeled on a platform set up for HIV, TB and hepatitis treatments for voluntary technology, intellectual property and data sharing. But no company has offered to share its data or transfer the necessary technology.
The other, a proposal to suspend intellectual property rights during the pandemic, has been blocked in the World Trade Organization by the United States and Europe, home to the companies responsible for making the coronavirus vaccines. That drive has the support of at least 119 countries among the 164 member states of the WTO and the African Union, but is vigorously opposed by vaccine makers.
Pharmaceutical companies say instead of lifting IP restrictions, rich countries should simply give more of the vaccines they have to poorer countries via COVAX, the public-private initiative that helped create equitable vaccine distribution. The organization and its partners delivered their first doses last week – in very limited quantities.
But rich countries are not willing to give up what they have. Ursula Von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, has used the term “general common good” to describe the vaccines. Still, the European Union imposed export controls on vaccines, which in some cases allows countries to prevent shots from leaving their borders.
In comments, Nigerian Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said on her first day as director general of the WTO on Monday that it was time to shift focus to the vaccination needs of the world’s poor.
“We need to focus on working with companies to now open more viable manufacturing locations and license them in emerging and developing markets,” she said, according to notes from her meeting with delegates shared with The Associated Press.
The long-held model in the pharmaceutical industry is that companies bring in huge amounts of money and research in exchange for the right to make a profit from their drugs and vaccines. At an industry forum last May, Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla described the idea of widespread IP rights sharing as “nonsense” and even “dangerous”. AstraZeneca’s chief, Pascal Soriot, said that if intellectual property is not protected, “there is no incentive for anyone to innovate.”
Thomas Cueni, Director General of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, called the idea of removing patent protection “a very bad signal for the future. You indicate that if you have a pandemic, your patents are worthless. ”
Proponents of vaccine blueprint sharing argue that, unlike most drugs, the taxpayer has paid billions to develop vaccines that are now “global public goods” and must be used to end the biggest public health emergency since time immemorial.
“People are literally dying because we cannot agree on intellectual property rights,” said Mustaqeem De Gama, a South African diplomat who has been deeply involved in WTO discussions.
Paul Fehlner, the chief legal officer of biotech company Axcella and a proponent of the WHO patent pool board, said governments that invested billions of dollars into vaccine and treatment development should have demanded more from the companies that funded them from the start.
“One condition for taking tax money is that they are not treated like dupes,” he said.
In an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading pandemic expert in the United States, said that all options should be on the table, including increasing aid, improving production capacity in the third world and working with pharmaceutical companies to ease their patents.
“Rich countries, including ourselves, have a moral responsibility when you have a global outbreak like this,” Fauci said. “We need to get the whole world vaccinated, not just our own country.”
It is difficult to know exactly how much more vaccine there is could be made global if restrictions on intellectual property were lifted, as factories’ spare production capacity is not publicly shared. But Suhaib Siddiqi, former director of chemistry at Moderna, said with the blueprint and technical advice that a modern plant should be able to get vaccine production up and running in three to four months.
“In my opinion, the vaccine belongs to the public,” said Siddiqi. “Any company that has experience in synthesizing molecules should be able to do that.”
Back in Bangladesh, the Incepta plant tried to get what it needed to make more vaccines in two ways: by offering its production lines to Moderna and by contacting a WHO partner. Moderna did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the Bangladesh factory, but its CEO, Stéphane Bancel, told European lawmakers that the company’s engineers are in the process of expanding production in Europe.
“In fact, by transferring more technology now, production and increased output could be at great risk for the coming months,” he said. “We are very open to doing it in the future once our current sites are up and running.”
Muktadir said he was also in talks last May with CEPI, or the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, one of the WHO partners in a global effort to fairly purchase and distribute COVID-19 vaccines, but nothing has come of it. . CEPI spokesperson Tom Mooney said last year’s talks with Incepta did not spark interest, but that CEPI is still in talks “about matchmaking capabilities, including the ability to use Incepta’s capacity for second-wave vaccines.”
Muktadir said he fully appreciates the extraordinary scientific achievement involved in the creation of vaccines this year, wants the rest of the world to share and is willing to pay a fair price.
“No one should just give up their property for nothing,” he said. “A vaccine can be made accessible to humans – high-quality, effective vaccines.”
Cheng reported from Toronto. Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, Al-Emrun Garjon in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Andrew Meldrum in Johannesburg, South Africa contributed to this report.
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