[WSMDiscuss] Covid-19 vaccine/treatment apartheid endorsed at WTO today, damn it

[Estelle Fein]

I agree wholeheartedly with your argument and anger about the rich folks keeping poorer folks from having access to the life saving vaccinations 

But I object to you calling Joe Biden a. “ jerk “ 

He is not a jerk. He is definitely not in the same ball park as Jair Bolsonaro
Neither is Justin Trudeau 

Such sweeping condemnations don’t help the creation of peace and cooperation in our sad, suffering world 







Sent from my iPad

> On Feb 4, 2021, at 1:03 PM, Patrick Bond <pbond at mail.ngo.za> wrote:
> 
> 
> (Capitalist greed prevails: the North's executive committees of the bourgeoisie - to be an absolutely accurate Vulgar Marxist about today's events in Geneva - are creating a world where Big Pharma insists on Intellectual Property rights on massively-subsidised, excessively-expensive commodities that are now in short supply, so that generic vaccines and treatments will remain illegal, so that this virus could keep running around the world forever and forever. How short-sighted can these WTO negotiators be.
> 
>     At the right, a protest on Tuesday at the U.S. embassy in Pretoria by Medicins sans Frontier and local C19 People's Coalition allies. 
> 
>     We need many more expressions of anger at jerks like Joe Biden, Jair Bolsonaro, Boris Johnson, Justin Trudeau who is hoarding five times the number of vaccines as Canada has residents, the Japanese, the Europeans especially the Swiss, even the hypocrite New Zealanders who apparently did not support the IP waiver proposal by India, South Africa, Kenya and Swaziland. And as you see below, there's that guy who seems to be most committed to defending IP, dating back to his opposition to generic AIDS medicines: Bill Gates.
> 
>     According to Chinese tv, "Egypt, Nigeria, India, and Venezuela, also 'harshly criticized' the European Union for introducing curbs on vaccine exports." We have no info yet on whether China and/or Russia were in favour of the waiver.
> 
>     At least there is one remark of interest, below:
> 
> patent-defending countries are unlikely to let their guard down on intellectual property at the WTO, even during the pandemic. “Almost every major pharmaceutical exporter except India has objected to this,” Evenett said. “I don’t see that proposal going ahead, unless circumstances dramatically change. "But that doesn’t mean that India and South Africa can’t act unilaterally," he added.)
> 
> https://www.dw.com/en/india-south-africa-lose-bid-to-ban-covid-vaccine-patents/a-56460175
> 
> Deutsche Welle Business
> 
> India, South Africa lose bid to ban COVID vaccine patents
> 
> An IP waiver by the WTO would have made it easier for developing countries to produce COVID-19 vaccines and dugs. Wealthy countries opposed the move, arguing that a suspension of patents would stifle innovation.
> 
> India and South Africa want to see vaccine patents lifted temporarily, to boost the global supply of vaccines
> 
> The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Thursday rejected a proposal by India and South Africa to temporarily suspend intellectual property (IP) rules related to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, which they said would have allowed drugmakers in poor countries to start production of effective vaccines sooner.  
> 
> The two countries had approached the global trade body in October, calling on it to waive parts of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). The suspension of rights such as patents, industrial designs, copyright and protection of undisclosed information would ensure "timely access to affordable medical products including vaccines and medicines or to scaling-up of research, development, manufacturing and supply of medical products essential to combat COVID-19," they said. 
> 
> The proposal was vehemently opposed by wealthy nations, including the European Union, the United States and Britain, who said that a ban would stifle innovation at pharma companies by robbing them of the incentive to make huge investments in research and development. This would be especially counterproductive during the current pandemic which needs the drugmakers to remain on their toes to deal with a mutating virus, they argue. 
> 
> Watch video 07:14
> WHO: 'We need to change that distribution pattern very quickly'
> 
> The WTO's decision comes as wealthy countries face criticism for cornering billions of COVID shots — many times the size of their populations — while leaving poor countries struggling for supplies. Experts say the global scramble for vaccines, or vaccine nationalism, risks prolonging the pandemic.  
> 
> "We have to recognize that this virus knows no boundaries, it travels around the globe and the response to it should also be global. It should be based on international solidarity," said Ellen 't Hoen, the director of Medicines Law & Policy — a nonprofit campaigning for greater access to medicines.
> 
> "Many of the large-scale vaccine manufacturers are based in developing countries. All the production capacity that exists should be exploited…and that does require the sharing of knowhow and the technology by those who have it in their hands," she told DW. 
> 
> Watch video 01:20
> Will the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine only be available in rich countries?
> 
> Not enough production capacity 
> 
> Supporters of the waiver, which include dozens of developing and least-developed countries and NGOs, said the WTO's IP rules were acting as a barrier to urgent scale-up of production of vaccines and other much needed medical equipment in poor countries. 
> 
> Those critical of India and South Africa's proposal argue that suspension of patents would not address the production and shortage issues currently plaguing vaccination drives globally. 
> 
> "Demands for a release of patent information relating to vaccines would not increase supply by a single dose in the short term because they overlook the complexity of vaccine manufacture and ignore the extent to which vaccine manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies and developing nations already cooperate in order to ramp up vaccination capacities," Thomas Cueni, the general director of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA), told DW. 
> 
> "The euphoria over the development of highly effective vaccines has somehow created the impression that once a vaccine has been developed, a billion doses can roll out of the factories at the push of a button. I think we need to be aware of just how complex and difficult vaccine manufacturing is," he says. 
> 
> Unprecedented collaboration 
> 
> While the WTO General Council agreed that there was an urgent need to ensure an equitable distribution of vaccines and drugs, and that too at a swift pace, they could not arrive at a consensus on a waiver. 
> 
> The pharmaceutical industry says it was witnessing an unprecedented level of collaboration among companies, including rival, to ensure a safe and swift access to vaccines to people around the globe. They point to AstraZeneca's deal with the world's largest vaccine maker, India's Serum Institute, and Johnson & Johnson teaming up with South Africa's Aspen Pharmacare to produce its yet-to-be-approved vaccine. In addition, they said German company Bayer has signed up to help produce Germany's CureVac's mRNA-based coronavirus vaccine, and Sanofi has agreed to help rival Pfizer with the production of its vaccine developed by BioNtech.  
> 
> Then there is the WHO-backed COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) facility, funded through donations, to ensure fair global access to coronavirus vaccines. The facility plans to distribute 2 billion doses by the end of 2021, but has struggled to gain traction.
> 
> ***
> 
> Rich and poor nations clash over patent waivers on lifesaving vaccines
> Toni Waterman in Brussels 
> CGTN (Chinese state tv)
> The world's richest nations have shot down a proposal by India and South Africa to temporarily waive patent protections on potentially lifesaving coronavirus vaccines and treatments.  
> 
> According to a Geneva trade official, Canada, the UK, Switzerland and Japan voiced their opposition to the waiver during an informal meeting of the World Trade Organization's TRIPS Council on Thursday, saying there was "no concrete indication" that intellectual property (IP) rights have been a barrier to accessing medicines and technologies. 
> 
> Representatives from the European Union argued that vaccine scarcity could be fixed through a combination of licensing and expanding manufacturing capacity. 
> 
> Supporters of the proposal stressed that manufacturing capacity in the "Global South" was being underutilized. They called the vaccine shortfall "artificial" and claimed it was part of a scheme to "perpetuate monopoly power using IP," said the trade official.   
> 
> Several countries, including Egypt, Nigeria, India, and Venezuela, also "harshly criticized" the European Union for introducing curbs on vaccine exports.  
> 
> "The measure was characterized as serious and alarming and indicative that those countries that continue to oppose most vociferously the IP waiver are indeed the ones that have secretly bought up their way to available production and continue to collude with pharmaceutical companies under the veil of secrecy," said the trade official.  
> 
> Last year, as global scientists worked around the clock to develop COVID-19 vaccines, officials from the world's richest countries vehemently touted equitable access, many promising to supply hundreds of millions of doses to the world's poorest nations. They also struck multiple bilateral deals with pharmaceutical companies – six for the EU – and plowed billions of public money into the companies to accelerate vaccine development and offset risk.  
> 
> But now the vaccines have arrived, the gulf between the haves and have nots is spreading. According to analysis from The Economist Intelligence Unit, rich nations such as the UK, U.S., Israel, and those in the EU are likely to achieve "widespread vaccination coverage" by late 2021, but the world's poorest countries will not hit that same benchmark until at least 2024. 
> 
> "We cannot continue to engage in endless discussions, while in the real world millions of lives are lost to the coronavirus pandemic," the South Africa delegate said during the meeting. 
> 
> On Wednesday, the WHO-led COVAX facility said it hoped to ship 335 million doses to low- and middle-income countries by the end of June.  
> 
> ***
> 
> https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-patent-grab-big-pharma/
> 
> Europe hints at patent grab from Big Pharma
> 
> Prominent figures in Germany, Italy and even at the European Council are toughening on patents — but are they bluffing?
> 
> By Ashleigh Furlong and Sarah Anne Aarup
> February 3, 2021 8:50 pm
> Ever so softly, European politicians are beginning to voice a once unthinkable threat by suggesting they could snatch patents from drug companies to make up for massive shortfalls in the supply of coronavirus vaccines.
> 
> Big Pharma businesses have for many years regarded EU countries as unquestioningly loyal allies over intellectual property rights in the international trade arena. The EU could always be relied upon to defend U.S., Japanese and European drugmakers from poor nations in Africa and South Asia that have long wanted the recipe of critical medicines to be handed over to generic manufacturers.
> 
> But fury over the inability of companies to deliver on contracts amid the COVID-19 pandemic means that now even European politicians, from the Italian parliament to German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, are arguing, albeit cautiously, that patents may no longer be as sacrosanct as they once were.
> 
> The big question is whether they are just saber-rattling, knowing full well that any patent raid would shatter an ultimate commercial taboo and risk an exodus of leading companies from Europe over fears about the loss of IP.
> 
> The European Commission's Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, a doyen of French big business, is at pains to stress that there is no question of redistributing patents. On Wednesday, he insisted that he would lead efforts by Brussels to help pharmaceutical companies expand their production sites and cooperate on output. “I will make sure they get everything they need,” he said.
> 
> That more traditional pro-business stance from Breton will prove comforting to pharma executives, who are now facing far more hostile messaging from other quarters of the EU.
> 
> European Council President Charles Michel last week raised the prospect that the EU could adopt “urgent measures” by invoking an emergency provision in the EU treaties in response to supply shortfalls. Commission officials have pointed to powers in Article 122 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which ostensibly could be used to force vaccine makers to share their patents or other licenses — known as compulsory licensing.
> 
> Europe's most powerful economy minister, Germany’s Altmaier, who hails from the business-friendly center-right Christian Democratic Union, also seemed open to the possibility. During a television talk show last week, Altmaier said compulsory licenses wouldn’t help to increase production in the next couple of months because it would take time to set up additional production centers. But if cooperation among pharmaceutical companies to increase production should fail, he said, he “would be willing to talk about coercive measures.”
> 
> Adding to the chorus, Alexis Tsipras, former Greek prime minister and current leader of the main opposition Syriza party, has called for a European patents pool. In an opinion piece for POLITICO last week, he warned that depending on a few pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines for the whole of Europe is a “weak” strategy. 
> 
> Going nuclear
> 
> India and South Africa are pushing for a nuclear option, above and beyond compulsory licensing. They want a temporary international waiver on the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) for all coronavirus-related medical products, including vaccines and treatments.
> 
> This is set to come up on the agenda of the informal TRIPS Council meeting Thursday, but is set to meet almost universal opposition from wealthy countries at the World Trade Organization, with the EU, U.K., U.S., and Switzerland all coming out against it.
> 
> Intriguingly, however, even here, potential cracks are emerging in the longer term European position. In early December, the Italian parliament passed a resolution calling on the government to support the waiver.
> 
> Civil society’s hopes were further boosted during the C20 — a civil society meeting that runs parallel to the G20 — from January 25 to 27. According to several attendees, Italian officials suggested that the Italian G20 presidency this year could support the waiver.
> 
> However, other attendees have played down the importance of those comments, since they weren't issued at the ministerial level and were conciliatory in tone. Indeed, at the official level in Geneva, the Italian foreign ministry said Rome's position was still fully in line with the European Commission's.
> 
> Nevertheless, Brandon Locke, policy and advocacy manager at ONE Campaign anti-poverty advocacy group, believes the Italian debate “might just be the crack in the ice to sort of get things rolling.” 
> 
> “The fallout from the AstraZeneca and Pfizer [vaccine] delays are really causing a massive shift in how a lot of member states are thinking about vaccine supply and the traditional frameworks through which manufacturing was supposed to be carried out,” he said.  
> 
> Tommaso Valletti, former chief competition economist at the Commission, has also signaled support for the waiver and the issuing of compulsory licenses. "Do we really believe that this would 'jeopardize' future innovation? 2.2m people are dead," he tweeted on Tuesday. 
> 
> However, there remains the formidable hurdle that WTO decisions must pass by consensus: Even if Italy did support the waiver, it's unlikely to make any difference.
> 
> Push for unilateral action
> 
> While unified WTO action is unlikely, the EU, U.S., U.K., Switzerland and Japan have offered to help members that want to implement existing "flexibilities" in the WTO’s intellectual property agreement, according to one Geneva trade official. That brings compulsory licensing into play, and countries can implement this individually. Several countries, including Germany and France, have already even strengthened legislation to make these measures easier to implement.
> 
> Usually seen as a last resort, there are very few cases of compulsory licensing of medicines. But one could make the case in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, explains Ceyhun Pehlivan, a lawyer at Linklaters’ Madrid office: Governments could say it's an appropriate option if the license holder can't produce enough vaccines or medicines. Opponents of compulsory licenses argue they would discourage companies from producing these kinds of products in the future, Pehlivan added.
> 
> Historically, compulsory licensing has certainly not proved an attractive option. Only once in WTO history has a developing country lacking production capabilities forced an export license onto a patent-holding country. In 2007, Rwanda sought to import antiretroviral HIV medicines from Canada — and Ottawa granted the license over a year after the initial ask.
> 
> There's another problem — possibly the Achilles' heel of the push for IP waivers and compulsory licenses: While granting a compulsory license may mean that another manufacturer can produce a drug or vaccine without being sued by the license holder, it doesn't give them the all-important know-how or technology transfer to actually make the drug. These are separate from patents and are particularly important for the manufacture of complex drugs, such as mRNA vaccines, which up until now, had never been made before. 
> 
> The Geneva-based diplomat pointed to the know-how issue as a significant obstacle. “That’s the $1 million question,” the diplomat said.
> 
> One possible avenue is the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), which was meant to become a source for open-access knowledge on COVID-19 science and technology. However, as yet, not a single patent-holding drugmaker has agreed to sign up. 
> 
> ‘Guerilla war’ against IP rights 
> 
> Behind the spat at the WTO, a larger question looms: Is this an attempt to permanently override aspects of intellectual property rights that some countries disagree with? 
> 
> “You can essentially see it as a play by two countries, India and South Africa, who never really liked the current intellectual property rights rules of the WTO,” said Simon Evenett, an economics professor at St. Gallen University in Switzerland. “I see it in a broader 25-year-long context of this sort of guerilla war against these rules.”
> 
> But for now, patent-defending countries are unlikely to let their guard down on intellectual property at the WTO, even during the pandemic. 
> 
> “Almost every major pharmaceutical exporter except India has objected to this,” Evenett said. “I don’t see that proposal going ahead, unless circumstances dramatically change.
> 
> "But that doesn’t mean that India and South Africa can’t act unilaterally," he added.
> 
> ***
> 
> Road to Hell Paved with Good Intentions
> 
> By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
> KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Feb 3 2021 (IPS) - Access to COVID-19 vaccines for many developing countries and most of their people will have to wait as the powerful and better off secure earlier access regardless of need or urgency. More profits, by manufacturing scarcity, will surely cause even more loss of both lives and livelihoods.
> 
> Good intentions not enough
> To induce private efforts to develop and distribute vaccines, the WHO initiated COVAX to ensure more equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. However, interest by vaccine companies has been limited, while some governments – especially from better-off upper middle-income countries – pursue other options.
> 
> COVAX has been co-led with GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). Buoyed by their earlier success with advance market commitments (AMC), they have extended the same approach in very different circumstances.
> 
> AMC was originally conceived to induce the development of vaccines for ‘neglected diseases’. Such infectious diseases remain threats in poor countries and among poor people. Hence, prospective sales revenue was believed to be too small for needed investments by profit-seeking vaccine companies.
> 
> By guaranteeing and subsidising sales, the AMC effectively promises the vaccine developer to make the research and development effort profitable, typically with early payments and subsidies to enhance the inducement.
> 
> No one size fits all
> In the Covid-19 pandemic context, however, the COVAX AMC is not a ‘white knight’ coming to the rescue of an orphaned, typically tropical disease. Instead, it competes with other buyers, mostly of greater means.
> 
> To put it bluntly, the Covid-19 pandemic context is quite different from the ‘neglected diseases’ problem which the AMC was conceived to address, i.e., contemporary Western R&D efforts presumed to be driven primarily, if not exclusively by the prospect of profits.
> The highly infectious ‘aerosol-borne’ virus quickly achieved a global reach. Apparently more likely to be lethal with advancing age, mass vulnerability to infection ensured a broad, inclusive, international market for Covid-19 vaccines from the outset.
> 
> Recognising the extent and impact of the pandemic threat, vaccine developers expect to sell their vaccines very profitably. They made advance sales to many rich-country governments, rather than, or even while committing to COVAX. Unsurprisingly in these circumstances, the COVAX AMC approach has not worked well, let alone equitably.
> 
> The companies did not require AMC advance purchases to start their efforts. Expecting the WHO to protect their interests, participating developing country governments, mainly of upper-middle income economies, have generally not worked together to push for further price moderation.
> 
> COVAX subverted
> Advance Covid-19 vaccine purchases by many rich country governments are not only greatly in excess of their population requirements, but also not made in a transparent manner conducive to improving equity.
> 
> Unsure of the efficacy and effectiveness of the often still experimental vaccines, some booked, paid for and now demand far more than needed by their populations. Thus, COVAX has been subverted by rich country government actions.
> 
> Ironically, instead of protecting and promoting the interests of the poor, the public interest and the common good, the COVAX AMC has served to set floor prices. Arguably, COVAX has ensured profits for vaccine companies without addressing the ‘only money talks’ problem and competitive ‘vaccine nationalism’.
> 
> To ensure a ‘people’s vaccine’ available to all, Acharya and Reddy have proposed public financing to develop or buy over vaccine formulas. This can ensure patentable and other relevant information is freely shared, enabling generic vaccine producers to greatly increase supply at much lower prices.
> 
> As rich country governments have already paid much to accelerate vaccine development, they can more easily secure and share the thus far undisclosed information needed to greatly and affordably scale up generic vaccine output.
> 
> As vaccine developers do not really expect much revenue from selling vaccines to the poor, such ‘generosity’ would cost them little, while earning them and the enabling governments priceless appreciation and goodwill in the process.
> 
> Way out
> The best way forward now involves approving the TRIPS waiver at the WTO, which the Trump administration, the EU and some allies, such as Brazil, have stubbornly blocked.
> 
> The TRIPS waiver – sought by developing countries led by South Africa, India and Pakistan – seeks to temporarily suspend several TRIPS provisions on patents, design and protection of undisclosed information.
> 
> The Biden administration has shown renewed commitment to multilateralism by re-joining the World Health Organization (WHO). It can demonstrate leadership by not only lifting the US embargo on exports of vaccines, vital medicines and equipment, but also advocating strongly for the TRIPS waiver proposal at the WTO.
> 
> US taxpayers have already spent many billions to accelerate private vaccine development and distribution. Vaccines for the world can be greatly increased, at little additional cost, by working with the rest of the world, as Chinese researchers did by sharing the virus’ genome sequence with the world within a fortnight of its discovery over a year ago.
> 
> ***
> 
> Indian Groups Demand NZ Supports WTO Vaccine Waiver
> 
> Thursday, 4 February 2021, 9:47 am
> Press Release: Joint Press Release
> A group of 36 Indian health organisations and 50 respected individuals has sent a letter to the NZ Ambassador to India, calling on the NZ Government to support the proposed waiver of World Trade Organisation (WTO) intellectual property rules to expand access to Covid-19 vaccines.
> 
> The appeal, which has been forwarded to the Prime Minister, is penned by The Delhi Network of Positive People, a group advocating for the rights of people with HIV/AIDS, and highlights how WTO patent monopolies preventing competition and local manufacturing contributed to a ten year delay in access to life saving HIV medicines for people in developing countries, leading to millions of unnecessary deaths.
> 
> "It is now clear that the longer the virus circulates in unprotected populations, the more likely it is that mutations will occur. These mutations can - including countries opposing the waiver proposal - and prolong the pandemic. In the face of such a crisis, the New Zealand silence is untenable and self-defeating", the letter states.
> 
> This follows another open letter sent by 42 New Zealand organisations and individuals also calling on the Prime Minister to support a "people’s vaccine" by supporting the waiver.
> 
> "Prime Minister Ardern has called for 2021 to be the year of the vaccine, but only one in 10 people in low-income developing countries will be able to access a vaccine this year", said It’s Our Future spokesperson Edward Miller.
> 
> "Supporting the WTO waiver will allow vaccine manufacturers in developing countries - already responsible for producing billions doses of various other vaccines - to contribute to the global effort to stop the Covid health and economic crises."
> 
> "The World Health Organisation has warned that vaccine inequality could cost the global economy US $9.2 trillion; much of that is income stolen from the pockets of the poorest communities on the planet"."
> 
> "Tomorrow at the TRIPS Council meeting, New Zealand has an opportunity to get off the fence and support the kind of universal vaccine access that Prime Minister Ardern has been advocating."
> 
> ***
> 
> Mail&Guardian
> 
> Bill Gates, Big Pharma and entrenching the vaccine apartheid
> 
> Simon Allison
> 30 Jan 2021
> 
> The pandemic has been good to billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates. In 2020, the Microsoft cofounder added $18-billion to his fortune, which now stands at a cool $131-billion. (Photo by Lionel Bonaventure/AFP)
> In October 2020, diplomats from South Africa and India approached the World Trade Organisation (WTO) with a revolutionary proposal.
> 
> Together, the two countries argued that countries should be allowed to ignore any patents related to Covid-19 vaccines, for the duration of the pandemic. In other words: everyone should be allowed to manufacture the vaccine, without penalty.
> 
> In their official communication, the countries said: “As new diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines for Covid-19 are developed, there are significant concerns [about] how these will be made available promptly, in sufficient quantities and at affordable prices to meet global demand.”
> 
> Just a few weeks later, Pfizer and BioNTech announced the first successful phase three trials for a Covid-19 vaccine, followed swiftly by Moderna and AstraZeneca.
> 
> In developing countries, jubilation at the prospect of a swift end to the devastating pandemic turned quickly into fear and anger, as it became clear that vaccines would only be made available to the rich, with little thought to equitable distribution. Canada, the worst offender, has pre-ordered so many vaccines that it will be able to vaccinate each of its citizens six times over. In the UK and US, it is four vaccines per person; and two each in the EU and Australia.
> 
> 
> The vaccines that have been made available to the developing world are either untested — such as the Chinese and Russian vaccines, for which insufficient clinical trial data has been released — or expensive. South Africa has ordered 1.5-million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but will pay more than double what the EU is paying per dose.
> 
> The EU says that it is entitled to a lower price because it invested in the vaccine’s development — nevermind that the AstraZeneca vaccine was literally tested on the bodies of South Africans who volunteered to be part of the clinical trial in Johannesburg.
> 
> In lower income countries, the situation is even worse. As of 18 January, 39-million vaccine doses had been administered in the world’s 50 richest countries, compared to just 25 individual doses in low-income countries. 
> 
> It appears that South Africa and India were right. Under the current rules, the vaccine cannot be made quickly or cheaply enough to meet global demand, which vaccines are only going to those countries that can afford it. This is a “catastrophic moral failure”, said the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Some activists have described the situation as a “vaccine apartheid”.
> 
> Nor has South Africa and India’s proposal received support from the most influential non-state actor in global public health: Bill Gates
> 
> Nonetheless, the proposal for a patent waiver has been repeatedly rejected at the WTO by wealthier countries including the European Union, the United Kingdom, US and Switzerland; countries which, as Reuters wryly noted, are “all home to major pharmaceutical companies”. They also all enjoy early access to the vaccine.
> 
> Nor has South Africa and India’s proposal received support from the most influential non-state actor in global public health: Bill Gates. 
> 
> The pandemic has been good to Gates. In 2020, the Microsoft cofounder added $18-billion to his fortune, which now stands at a cool $131-billion (the annual GDP of Ethiopia, a country of 112-million people, is $96-billion). He is the fourth-richest person in the world.
> 
> The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has since its inception in 2000 spent more than $54-billion combating diseases such as polio and malaria and bolstering the health systems of developing countries. It funds everything from governments to civil society organisations to health journalism outlets, which means it has an enormous say in how health policy is shaped and communicated. It also contributes 12% of the WHO’s total budget.
> 
> But despite Gates’ stated commitment to an equitable distribution of the Covid vaccine, he is refusing to back South Africa and India’s calls for a waiver on patents. 
> 
> This should not come as a surprise: the Gates Foundation has historically been opposed to efforts to reform intellectual property protections for pharmaceutical companies — putting it at odds with other public health NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders (MSF) — and has in fact lobbied for developing countries to impose even stronger protections for drug companies’ patents. This is perhaps because Gates’ own fortune is built on intellectual property, specifically the copy­rights and patents associated with Windows and Microsoft.
> 
> In response to a question from the Mail & Guardian, Gates argued that lifting patents would not make any real difference. “At this point, changing the rules wouldn’t make any additional vaccines available.” That’s because, he claims, there are only a handful of manufacturers in the world with the necessary capacity to make the vaccines, and these are all at capacity already.
> 
> This claim is only partially true, as MSF vaccine pharmacist Alain Alsalhani told the M&G. Highly specialised manufacturers are needed to make traditional vaccines, such as the AstraZeneca jab, because this involves isolating and replicating parts of the virus itself. 
> 
> Only 43 companies are on the WHO’s approved list of vaccine manufacturers, and it could take years to set up new factories that meet the regulations.
> 
> But the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are based on manipulating messenger RNA (mRNA), which appears to be significantly easier to manufacture. Moderna’s vaccines are being produced by Lonza, a Swiss chemicals company with no previous experience of vaccine manufacture. This suggests that the pool of companies that could make the vaccine is much higher — there are 10 000 companies in India alone that manufacture medicines, and a proportion of these could potentially be involved in the manufacture of mRNA vaccines.
> 
> “If this assumption is verified, and we hope we will have more detailed analysis [soon], then we are changing the story here,” said Alsalhani.
> 
> Even then, Alsalhani warns that waiving patent protections is no miracle fix, because the technical challenges are still considerable — especially if the big pharmaceutical companies are unwilling to share their processes. Moderna, for example, has said it will not enforce its patent rights; but Lonza, which actually makes the vaccine, “won’t talk to us” about how it’s actually done, he said.
> 
> South Africa and India are continuing their fight at the WTO. But with the world’s most powerful countries ranged against them, and without the support of Bill Gates — the single most influential unelected individual in public health— the chances of success are as slim.
> 
> ***
> 
> A global vaccine apartheid is unfolding. People’s lives must come before profit
> 
> Winnie Byanyima
> The poorest countries are missing out on adequate doses of vaccines – and the health implications should concern us all
> 
> 
> ‘We can and must act now to change the otherwise catastrophic trajectory of this pandemic.’ Covid-19 mural in Barcelona. Photograph: Matthias Oesterle/Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock
> 
> 
> Fri 29 Jan 2021 07.45 GMT
> 
> 1314
> Nine months ago world leaders were queueing up to declare any Covid-19 vaccine a global public good. Today we are witness to a vaccine apartheid that is only serving the interests of powerful and profitable pharmaceutical corporations while costing us the quickest and least harmful route out of this crisis.
> 
> I am sickened by news that South Africa, a country whose HIV history should have taught us all the most appalling life-costing consequences of allowing pharmaceutical corporations to protect their medicine monopolies, has had to pay more than double the price paid by the European Union for the AstraZeneca vaccine for far fewer doses than it actually needs. Like so many other low- and middle-income countries, South Africa is today facing a vaccine landscape of depleted supply where it is purchasing power, not suffering, that will secure the few remaining doses.
> 
> Advertisement
> Nine out of 10 people living in the poorest countries are poised to miss out on a vaccine this year. Production delays put even this figure in doubt. Unjustifiably high prices block access and threaten to push more countries into an ever-deeper debt crisis. If we continue to pursue the vaccine model we have, we will fail to get this pandemic under control for years to come.
> 
> Failure to change course will come at the cost of millions of lives and livelihoods around the world; to our progress on tackling poverty; to businesses, including those represented here at the World Economic Forum this week; and to our collective public health and economic security. Make no mistake, the costs of vaccine inequality will not be confined to those living in the poorest countries.
> 
> The longer the virus is allowed to continue in a context of patchy immunity, the greater the chance of mutations that could render the vaccines we have and the vaccines some people in rich countries have already received, less effective or ineffective.
> 
>  
> 'We are worried': Indians hopeful but anxious as vaccination drive begins
> Read more
> Research commissioned by the International Chamber of Commerce published this week predicts that delays to vaccine access in poorer nations will also cost the global economy an estimated $9tn (£6.6tn), with nearly half of this absorbed in wealthy countries such as the US, Canada, Germany and the UK.
> 
> We cannot rewind the past nine months or the failure so far of governments to enact their pledge to make Covid-19 vaccines global public goods. But we can and must act now to change the otherwise catastrophic trajectory of this pandemic. The vaccine science, knowhow and technology, paid for in large part by more than $100bn of taxpayers’ money, can no longer be treated as the private property of pharmaceutical corporations. Instead, these must be shared openly, via the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 technology access pool, so that more manufacturers can be brought on board and a global plan put in action to scale up vaccine production.
> 
> To clear the pathway for this, governments must also urgently back the proposal tabled to the World Trade Organization to temporarily waive intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines, treatments and tests until the world has reached critically needed herd immunity and this pandemic is under control.
> 
> Almost every business on the planet has had to step away from business as usual as a result of this pandemic. It is in all our interests that pharmaceutical corporations now do the same. I invite governments and business leaders to join the growing call for a “people’s vaccine” and together chart a new path that can secure enough vaccines, tests and treatments for all people in all nations.
> 
> • Winnie Byanyima is executive director of UNAids and a UN undersecretary general
> 
> ***
> 
> Foreign Affairs
> 
> The Folly of Hoarding Knowledge in the COVID-19 Age
> 
> Let Vaccine Producers in Poor Countries Help End the Pandemic
> 
> By Tahir Amin
> 
> January 29, 2021
>  
> 
> By now, it has become clear that the means to end the COVID-19 pandemic will reach people in poor countries far later than they will get to people in wealthy ones. Only one of the 29 poorest countries in the world—Guinea in West Africa—has begun vaccinations, and it has so far managed to immunize just 55 people. Half of the planned 2021 supplies of the leading vaccine candidates have already been gobbled up by a small contingent of wealthy nations, including Australia, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union. Together, these countries account for just 14 percent of the global population. At least a fifth of the world’s people will not get access to COVID-19 vaccines until 2022, and many low-income countries will have to wait until 2023 or 2024 for full immunization. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), warned on January 25 that vaccine inequity could cost the global economy $9.2 trillion.
> 
> Ensuring that billions of people get swift access to COVID-19 vaccines was always going to be difficult, especially as many national governments have hoarded supplies. But the task has been made even harder by another kind of hoarding—of intellectual property and technology. Western governments and pharmaceutical companies could agree to loosen or temporarily suspend intellectual property protections and transfer technology to manufacturers in the developing world. Doing so would speed the production of more affordable and effective vaccines for broad distribution. But wealthy countries and their pharmaceutical giants have been unwilling to take this step, clinging instead to an old, quasi-colonial economic order that disadvantages poor countries—and threatens to prolong the pandemic.
> 
> TRIPPING UP AGAINST INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
> 
> Ten of the 13 leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates have been or are being developed by pharmaceutical companies in wealthy countries. These companies have mostly limited the manufacture of the vaccines to partners and suppliers in the West, leaving a number of potential producers in poorer countries in the cold. More broadly sharing intellectual property and technology with producers in the developing world could help significantly increase production of vaccines and reduce vaccine inequity. But only a few Western pharmaceutical companies have agreed to such technology transfers: U.S. giant Johnson & Johnson has licensed its vaccine for production by Aspen Pharmacare in South Africa, while the British-Swedish multinational AstraZeneca and the U.S. company Novavax have entered into agreements with the Serum Institute of India.
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> There should be many more of these sorts of arrangements, since poor countries have the capacity to ramp up production. At least 40 other potential manufacturers in 14 developing countries already form a network that makes around 3.5 billion doses per year of various types of vaccines. But last May, Pfizer’s CEO dismissed as “nonsense” and “dangerous” the WHO’s efforts to encourage companies to voluntarily share their technology and intellectual property in the interest of making more broadly available vaccines, treatments, and other necessary products in the fight against COVID-19. No major pharmaceutical company has yet offered any contribution to the so-called technology access pool that the WHO set up to combat the pandemic.
> 
> This unfortunate dynamic compelled India and South Africa—backed by Eswatini, Kenya, Mozambique, and Pakistan—to cosponsor a proposal in October asking the World Trade Organization (WTO) to waive, for the duration of the pandemic, the trade body’s treaty on protecting intellectual property. The proposal won the further support of around 100 mostly low-or middle-income countries.
> 
> The WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, also known as TRIPS, requires the organization’s 164 member states to enforce most intellectual property protections for vaccines, trade secrets, diagnostic kits, ventilators, and other medical equipment. Supporters of the proposal argued that waiving these protections would allow manufacturers all over the world to more rapidly meet global demand for vaccines. If wealthy countries consented to the waiver, poor countries would probably not have to wait until 2023 or 2024 to inoculate the majority of their populations. The waiver would also help ensure that the world has a reserve supply of effective doses if some vaccine candidates prove to be ineffective, as is likely.
> 
> The clash between wealthy countries and poor ones over the right to scientific knowledge is not new.
> But the United Kingdom, the United States, and the member states of the European Union—countries that are incidentally hoarding COVID-19 vaccine supplies and technology—opposed the request, and major pharmaceutical companies also voiced objections. They claim that the waiver is too broad, that it does not acknowledge the potential lack of technical capacity or raw materials in poor countries, and that the WTO’s current intellectual property regime already provides sufficient flexibility in the case of public health emergencies. This resistance persists despite the fact that the European Union and the United Kingdom are now embroiled in a dispute over a shortfall in supplies of the AstraZeneca vaccine. WTO member states will meet again in early February to discuss the matter ahead of the general meeting of the trade body in March, when the proposal will likely be rejected or severely limited.
> 
> The clash between wealthy countries and poor ones over the right to scientific knowledge and technology is not new. In the early 1970s—a time when many new nation-states were emerging from disintegrating European empires—the UN General Assembly resolved to declare a “New International Economic Order,” in which wealthy countries would help formerly colonized ones become more self-reliant through the transfer of technology. Proponents of the scheme imagined such transfers as a form of reparation for decades of imperial plunder. But the wealthy states never accepted or acted upon the resolution.
> 
> Instead, they did the opposite. Edmund Pratt, then CEO of Pfizer, feared that manufacturers in developing countries would compete with companies like his for these new markets. Along with other business leaders, he encouraged U.S. officials in the 1970s and early 1980s to integrate the defense of intellectual property into U.S trade policy. The Reagan administration then rallied the European and Japanese governments to this cause, helping to place intellectual property at the heart of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. This agreement required member states to enforce intellectual property rights in the multilateral trading system for the first time, even when many developing countries didn’t maintain such requirements. Although this deal protected the investments that wealthy countries and their companies made in scientific, technological, and cultural goods, it also prevented low- and middle-income countries from competing on an even footing in the burgeoning knowledge economy. The deal became formalized as the TRIPS Agreement in 1995 when wealthy countries pushed it through the WTO over the objections of lower-income countries, which were eventually railroaded into signing. Since then—and at the behest of their private sectors—Japan, the United States, and European countries have also pursued bilateral free trade agreements with many developing countries to further strengthen intellectual property protections.
> 
> HOARDING KNOWLEDGE
> 
> To oppose the proposal before the WTO, wealthy countries draw on the same arguments and claims they used to set up the current international intellectual property regime. In October, the British government argued that intellectual property protections won’t actually prevent access to vaccines, treatments, or related technologies. But that is demonstrably false: these rules have invariably driven up prices of important medications and put them out of reach of the world’s poorest. When the HIV/AIDS epidemic was reaching its peak in the 1990s, millions of people died in the developing world in part because the necessary drugs cost an astronomical $10,000 per person per year. Nearly a decade later—and after weathering lawsuits from 39 pharmaceutical companies—hard-hit South Africa was able to remove some patent barriers. Prices for antiretroviral drugs dropped significantly, and many more people received treatment.
> 
> Proponents of the TRIPS Agreement restrictions, including governments, pharmaceutical companies, and even the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, claim that the existing order is adaptable enough as it is. They point to flexibilities in the WTO rules that allow member states to override patents by issuing what is known as a “compulsory license” in the case of a public health emergency—permitting a manufacturer in the developing world, for instance, to produce a vaccine or treatment patented by a company in the West. But compulsory licenses, while useful, aren’t conducive to situations that demand swift action. The process for securing such a license is laborious: in the case of COVID-19 vaccines, for instance, manufacturers would first have to show they attempted to negotiate a voluntary license with the relevant pharmaceutical company, which has proven hard to accomplish in all but a few cases because the patent holders can simply refuse or delay the process. Even when such licenses are granted, they tend to limit the number of countries to which the generic manufacturer in a developing country can supply the product. Generic manufacturers also would have to secure a separate license for each product they sought to make. Developing countries are usually wary of issuing compulsory licenses because they fear that wealthy countries, pressured by their pharmaceutical companies, might levy trade sanctions in retaliation or lodge a case at the WTO Dispute Settlement Body claiming that the developing country has not correctly adhered to the rules of the TRIPS Agreement.  
> 
> Intellectual property rules have invariably put important medications out of reach of the world’s poorest.
> Those defending the current system also contend that low- and middle-income countries do not have the technical capacity to manufacture and distribute vaccines at scale, especially ones that depend on sophisticated mRNA (messenger RNA) technology, such as those from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. But this argument rehearses a tired trope, the likes of which have been disproven in the past. In the 1980s, a Western firm refused to transfer vaccine technology to the Indian company Shantha Biotechnics, claiming that Shantha’s scientists would not be able to understand the required recombinant technology to produce the vaccines. Shantha subsequently went on to develop its own recombinant vaccine for hepatitis B, which became available for $1 per dose and enabled UNICEF and other organizations to undertake low-cost mass vaccinations. Indeed, the Indian company Gennova has already entered into phase I/II clinical trials with its own mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. Alternative manufacturing capability for sophisticated COVID-19 vaccines very likely exists in the developing world.
> 
> The most familiar argument against the suspension of intellectual property rules is that such a dismissal of patent protections will kill private innovation and hurt future investment in new vaccines and technologies. But this claim, too, is unsound. Taxpayer and nonprofit dollars have significantly financed most of the leading COVID-19 vaccines, as well as the development of the basic science underlying the mRNA platform. Pharmaceutical companies stepped up to the plate only after the public and nonprofit sectors had assumed the bulk of the risk. Now, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are poised to rake in $32 billion in COVID-19 vaccine sales in 2021 alone—and much more if mRNA platforms become more prevalent in the future. Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna may well be unwilling to enter into any technology transfer agreement precisely because they hope to cash in on mRNA technology. It would be a catastrophic moral failure—and a failure of market policy—to allow private interests to seek profits from publicly funded technology while millions perish.
> 
> COMMON GOOD
> 
> In April 2020, during the early stages of the pandemic, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said that a future COVID-19 vaccine would need to reach “every single corner of the world” at an affordable price: “This vaccine will be our universal, common good.”
> 
> Nine months later, those promises ring hollow. The governments of wealthy countries need to show leadership by encouraging pharmaceutical companies to work in the interest of the “universal, common good.” Governments could require their pharmaceutical companies to enter into technology transfer agreements with at least three suppliers in the “global South”—or those governments can support the WTO proposal put forward by India and South Africa to suspend intellectual property rights during the pandemic. Failing to do either will only lengthen this pandemic.
> 
> ________________________________________
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