Covid vaccine patent waivers

We repeat today in the print edition of our newspaper an article titled “How Joe Biden could vaccinate the world” reproduced from a U.S. publication, The Week for the benefit of those of our readers who may not have read the epaper we were compelled to limit ourselves to last Sunday on account of the Covid restrictions. Given the scale of the devastation this fast-spreading virus has caused on this planet, mankind is necessarily focused on all matters relating to the pandemic. Thus, together with people the world over who cheered President Biden’s recent election, most Lankans silently applaud the new American leader’s support for a waiver of patent rights on corona vaccines. Ryan Cooper, the popular columnist who wrote the article under reference said that Biden surprised the world by his administration favouring the intellectual property waiver requested by India and South Africa.

The U.S. is, after all, the most business friendly country in the world and the citadel of capitalism; so its president advocating such a waiver can be considered surprising by many. However, whether it would come to pass, in the context of concerns of the global pharmaceutical industry and, notably, the European Union, is a matter of grave doubt.

Achieving the desired objective is certainly not going to be easy. International news reports have said it has already hit a EU roadblock. Germany’s Angela Merkel has expressed reservations; and given that one of the key vaccine firms in the world is German, obtaining the required consensus on what’s called Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) at the World Trade Organization (WTO) will be a formidable task. Nobody can sensibly advocate a profit-driven dog-in-the-manger attitude on this matter. Admittedly massive investments have been made in developing the vaccines within an unprecedentedly tight time-frame; and the patent holders must be fairly compensated for giving up their intellectual property rights. There is no dispute on that. But other arguments have been adduced for not waiving these rights. Merkel is on record saying she does not believe giving patents away is the right solution for making vaccines more available. One report quoted her saying: “If a patent is given away and the quality is no longer controlled, I see more risk than chance.” It is not only Merkel who pushes that view. French President Emmanuel Macron has also echoed it saying recently: “The current issue is not really about intellectual property. Can you give intellectual property to laboratories that do not know how to produce and will not produce tomorrow?”

But third world pharmaceutical laboratories, notably in India, have been successfully producing anti-Covid vaccine. The Serum Institute of India is a major produce to the AstraZeneca vaccine and Sri Lanka is among the countries that procured supply from there. Unfortunately domestic compulsions in India, today perhaps the worst virus-hit country had made it impossible for that laboratory to honour export commitments made. We too are among those affected with our health sector now scrambling to find alternative supply sources to give the second dose to those who have already had the first jab of that AZ vaccine. Cooper says in his article that there are factories in Bangladesh and Canada “ready to go.” Obviously no fan of Big Pharma, he has advocated that “if the international community can’t get behind vaccinating the world, Biden should go it alone.”

There is no escaping the reality that medicines are incredibly expensive to develop. Most experimental drugs fail at some point during years of laboratory work that must be followed by animal and human testing. Thereafter regulatory approvals must be won and that can take time. We have seen this in the case of the Sinopharm vaccine that WHO has now approved for emergency use and is presently being administered here in Sri Lanka. When the costs of failures are factored into what may become an eventual product, they can run into astronomically high figures. In the case of the Covid vaccine, tax money in the U.S. and most probably other countries were pumped into the research and development effort for reasons that are self evident. A TRIPS waiver can certainly help to boost production of desperately needed vaccine. The most frequently used pandemic slogan is that “nobody is safe until everybody is safe.” That goes for countries too and makes the best case for a waiver.

Fortunately objections to intellectual property rights waivers of Merkel and Macron are not shared by all European leaders. Reports said that Italy and Spain had reacted more positively to the U.S. government’s initiative not to wait for WTO to reach a consensual decision. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has at the recent EU summit in Portugal proposed incentives for pharmaceutical companies to enter into voluntary licensing agreements and pool knowledge using existing WTO platforms. He has demanded that full use be made of existing manufacturing capacities and called for the removal of trade obstacles to ensure that supply chains function optimally. Although some European leaders have expressed vaccine quality concerns, this question should be viewed in the context of the best known Western pharmaceutical companies licensing third world laboratories to manufacture their products. This has been done to take advantage of lower production costs. That is a clear admission of the capabilities of third world manufacturers who have the ability to do the job. The EU has not slammed the door shut on this burning question of intellectual property rights waivers. It says it is ready for talks but insists that the measure needed to be part of more extensive discussion.

Hopefully, the humanitarian factor will take precedence over concerns of profit. Nobody is asking the vaccine manufacturers to give away the fruits of their labour. They can be fairly compensated for waiving their rights at a time of a global emergency affecting all mankind.