According to Oxfam, nine in ten people in underdeveloped countries will miss a vaccine by 2021.
Photographer: Prashanth Vishwanathan / Bloomberg
Photographer: Prashanth Vishwanathan / Bloomberg
Covid-19 vaccines appear to protect millions of the world’s citizens richest countries in the coming months. But vaccinating the rest of the world’s population may mean finding a way out of an intellectual property impasse.
Representatives from all 164 World Trade Organization member states met in Geneva last week to discuss a proposal from India and South Africa to waive broad parts of the WTO’s intellectual property rules and try to reach an agreement on how patents developed in the race against Covid-19 must be recognized.
The meeting ended without a consensus, leaving poorer countries that supported the proposal frustrated and legal protections for vaccines intact. That may be a victory for patent advocates, but the pressure to change will only increase if billions of people in poorer countries are not vaccinated as the rich world begins to receive a steady stream of doses of Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, Moderna Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc.
“With the greatest health crisis we’ve experienced, we are still unable to find alternative ways to deal with the IP problems when everyone’s lives are at stake,” said Tahir Amin, executive director of the Initiative for Europe. Medicines, Access & Knowledge, an organization that promotes better access to medicines. ‘You have the lawyers who say’ let’s knock down the wall ‘, and then you have the investors who say’ if we open the door, it’s like the floodgates’. We have to be smarter than that. “
A patent gives a drug manufacturer the exclusive rights to manufacture a vaccine that it develops, as well as the option to charge a price that covers the costs of research and development. However, their margin of profit per dose depends on the urgency of the situation, and in the midst of a pandemic, charging more than development costs is no doubt controversial. According to India’s proposal, the exemption should remain in effect until widespread vaccination has taken place and the majority of the world’s population has developed immunity.
Whether it is possible to reconcile will not become clear until the pandemic unfolds. The European Union and the US, home to leading drug manufacturers, are strongly opposed to the proposal, although the pricing may provide some room for negotiation.
Pfizer and his partner BioNTech has said their vaccine will cost $ 19.50 per dose in the US. That’s probably too much for many poorer countries, even if discounted, especially given the cost of the vaccine’s freezer storage requirements. But AstraZeneca’s vaccine costs $ 4 to $ 5 per dose and is the big hope for the developing world right now.
The Covax alliance, backed by more than 90 rich countries to improve access to vaccines in about 90 poor countries, has signed a deal with AstraZeneca to purchase and distribute vaccines.
Last month, Covax said it raised $ 2 billion, but that may not be enough, given that it will need another $ 5 billion next year to get 2 billion doses. On Tuesday, the EU and the European Investment Bank announced EUR 500 million ($ 608 million) in funding to help vaccinate 1 billion people as part of that effort.
“We are an integrated world,” said Fred Abbott, a professor at Florida State University College of Law. “Everyone understands that you can vaccinate anyone in the United States, but if you don’t vaccinate everyone around the world, you still have a problem.”
However, the pressure from developing countries will only increase next year if they are abandoned. UNAIDS, the UN agency that fights the immunodeficiency virus, calls it a choice between “a folk vaccine or a profit vaccine”.
A patient will receive the Covid-19 vaccine in Newcastle, UK, on December 8.
Photographer: Owen Humphreys / PA Wire / Bloomberg
Although the first vaccines have been distributed in the UK in recent days, by 2021, nine out of ten people in poor countries will miss a vaccine, according to Oxfam. That mirrors the early days of the AIDS response, said UNAIDS director Winnie Byanyima, when “treatment was only available to the rich, while poorer countries had to wait for years.”
The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations states that patent suspension is dangerous. If you forgo patents this time around, you risk damaging the entire medical infrastructure allowing Covid vaccines to be developed in record time, said Director General Thomas Cueni.
“The infringement of patent protection has far-reaching consequences,” he recently wrote New York Times op-ed, citing the development of messenger RNA, the underlying innovation that Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. “Scientists eager to investigate future uses of mRNA will struggle to find investments if intellectual property protection is snatched up when others see fit.”
Drug makers like AstraZeneca have promised not to benefit from their vaccine for the duration of the drug pandemic, while Moderna has said it will not enforce its patents during the pandemic. Even frequent critics of the drug manufacturers have praised some of these efforts.
There are precedents for countries unilaterally suspending patents, but they have been rarely used since 1945. Enforcement would be difficult – most patent applications have not even been issued yet, and it is difficult to force companies to disclose trade secrets, such as manufacturing processes that have wide-ranging applications beyond vaccines.
Back at the WTO, delegates have agreed to keep talks open and will submit a report to the WTO General Council on December 16, highlighting the “current lack of consensus” on the matter, according to a statement from the WTO. organization.
James Pooley, former deputy director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization, believes that while the proposal “is unlikely to go anywhere,” it could have an impact down the line.
“It’s the battering ram at the door,” he said. “If they keep hitting it, a hinge can break.”
– With help from James Paton, Bryce Baschuk and Yudith Ho