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A long slow-fire battle over Covid-19 vaccine patents is reaching a boiling point, as overflowing hospitals in India and Brazil have highlighted the desperate need to quickly produce more shots to inoculate the world. .
Some hope that if the World Trade Organization renounces a long-standing agreement designed to protect intellectual property, known as trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights or travel, more manufacturers could manufacture vaccines. and increase supply.
Who wants to suspend intellectual property rights over vaccines?
India and South Africa lead the way for a travel exemption, as many other low-income countries have also signed up, arguing that it is the only way to ensure “fair, equitable and affordable access”. ”To Covid-19 products, including vaccines and drugs.
The proposal comes after an attempt by the World Health Organization to promote the pooling of intellectual property (the Covid-19 Technology Access Pool) received limited interest from countries and companies last year. holders of intellectual property rights.
James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International Nonprofit, said the industry could do more to increase production. “We are definitely going slower than we need to. Companies accumulate both knowledge and intellectual property that could protect us not only from the current virus, but also from variants, ”he said.
Some manufacturers say they could produce more vaccines if they had the intellectual property, according to Ellen t’Hoen, director of Medicines Law & Policy.
He said Western governments that had helped fund vaccine development should have ensured that their distribution would be more equitable. Currently, 1.1 billion vaccines against Covid-19 have been administered worldwide, but less than 18 million doses have been administered in Africa.
“Governments have possibly yielded too much and given away such large sums of money without securing a commitment to share intellectual property,” he said.
Who is against giving up rights and why?
Wealthier nations, including the United States, the United Kingdom and the EU, have so far opposed the resignation, although the US trade representative last month suggested they should consider changes in trade rules to address the problem.
This worried the pharmaceutical industry, including some vaccine manufacturers who have warned Biden administration officials that this change could transmit new technologies, such as messaging RNA platforms. China and Russia. They hope to use the platforms to get new vaccines and even therapies in the future.
However, the main argument of drug manufacturers is that the waiver of intellectual property is not the solution.
Vaccine manufacturers have already made every stop to supply billions of doses at an unprecedented rate, including signing unusual partnerships with rivals to expand production. Modern put their patents online last summer, but they are not useful on their own.
Thomas Cueni, director general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, said vaccines were much more complicated than most drugs, so there had never been a mandatory license to make shots. He said the patent was “just the icing on the cake.”
“You could get Mary Berry’s recipe for the most beautiful cake you can imagine. But if you try to replicate this cake, good luck, ”he said.
Could new suppliers expand production if they had access to IP?
Sir Robin Jacob, president of intellectual property law at University College London, said there was “no evidence” that other companies could make the vaccines suddenly if the patented intellectual property was released.
Vaccines often have far fewer patents than drugs, but they are more difficult to manufacture, he said, so it is the availability of expertise that slows production. Johnson & Johnson has said it examined 100 potential partners, but concluded that only 10 were able to make its shot.
“There is hardly anyone with whom you can graduate. They couldn’t do it: you need a huge plant, huge skills, patent or not, it doesn’t matter, ”Jacob said.
Vaccine manufacturers could send experts to new plants to manage the technology transfer process, but that could damage production that was already underway, he warned. “If they now take people out of making the vaccine to teach someone in Bangladesh to build a factory that will take three to four years, they will not be here to make the vaccine now,” he said.
Are there enough raw materials?
Efforts to mass-produce Covid-19 vaccines on an unprecedented scale have been limited by several bottlenecks, including limited supplies of materials such as lipid nanoparticles and equipment such as bioreactor bags. New factories would face the same restrictions, including export controls that have slowed the movement of some key parts.
Prashant Yadav, a supply chain expert at the Center for Global Development, said patents are unlikely to help in the next six months due to tight supply, but that they could be useful in helping establish a manufacturing network that it could be connected within 12 to 18 months. .
“Activists call on governments to support the proposal using the immediate opportunity (the time-sensitive recording platform) for what may be useful in the medium and long term,” he said. He added that while vaccines are difficult to make, a waiver could spur greater equity in the distribution of an antiviral pill for Covid-19, like the one Merck is developing.
What else could help global access to vaccines?
Western countries have prioritized vaccination of their own populations rather than trying to protect the most vulnerable around the world. Now that the United States has enough vaccines for all Americans, it has bowed to pressure to give spare shots, starting with its stock of Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine, which has not been approved in the US. Other countries could do the same with surplus traits.
Another short-term help would be to facilitate export controls, so vaccine manufacturers are not restricted to where they send their shots or ingredients to make them.
The World Health Organization also seeks to encourage companies with mRNA vaccines to share their patents and know-how with regional centers in the poorest countries. The recently launched scheme could give pharmaceutical companies greater control over where their intellectual property ends up, although it continues to expand production.
But none of these proposals will drastically increase the availability of vaccines this year.
Additional reports of Donato Paolo Mancini in Rome
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