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Vaccine manufacturers have warned U.S. officials that temporarily withdrawing patents for Covid-19 shots would run the risk of delivering new technology to China and Russia, according to people familiar with the talks.
As the industry lobby has intensified in Washington, companies have warned in private meetings with U.S. trade and White House officials that waiving intellectual property rights could allow China and Russia exploit platforms such as mRNA, which could be used for other vaccines or even for therapies. for conditions such as cancer and heart problems in the future.
J&J, Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax did not respond to requests for comment.
At the World Trade Organization, India and South Africa proposed in October a measure to allow countries to temporarily revoke patent rights for pandemic-related medical products, and have since been supported. for about 60 countries.
While the Donald Trump administration strongly opposed the waiver of the WTO, along with the United Kingdom, the EU and Switzerland, the top trade official for U.S. President Joe Biden, Katherine Tai, did damaged American pharmaceutical companies by appearing to submit this position for review.
Tai and his staff have been discussing WTO intellectual property rules in recent weeks with pharmaceutical companies, unions, advocacy groups and Seth Berkley, chief executive of the UN-backed Gavi vaccine alliance. . His office has said the agency is “exploring all avenues” and “evaluating the effectiveness” of the waiver.
In a speech at the WTO meeting on vaccine equity earlier this month, Tai said both the government and the private sector should do their part to “live up to” “the spirit” of trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights Agreement (travel), which was born of the HIV crisis.
“We look forward to learning more today about how the market has once again failed to meet the health needs of developing countries,” Tai said at the WTO meeting. “As part of that, we need to consider what modifications and reforms to our trade rules may be necessary to reflect what we have learned.”
His speech has raised tensions between pharmaceutical companies and the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), prompting a vaccine maker to complain to White House officials about Tai’s statements to the WTO.
The White House did not respond to any requests for comment.
The USTR said its “top priority” was to “save lives” and that it “worked with our global partners to explore pragmatic and effective steps to increase the production and equitable distribution of vaccines.”
The WTO debate over whether to temporarily relinquish intellectual property protests comes amid concerns that rich countries will vaccinate their populations significantly faster than developing economies, which have struggled to get the necessary doses.
However, pharmaceutical companies insist that they are already doing everything possible to expand production and that bottlenecks in global manufacturing, not patents, are slowing down the speed of vaccine production.
The battle for intellectual property comes as drugmakers are once again under pressure nationwide as drug price reform raises the Biden administration’s agenda. This includes proposals to link drug prices to those in other industrialized countries, which are usually much cheaper, and allow Medicare, the pension plan for seniors, to negotiate prices.
Chinese and Russian vaccines use different approaches to mRNA, the technology that was first deployed in a product approved for a Covid-19 vaccine.
Although Russia’s Sputnik showed solid effectiveness in a peer-reviewed paper in The Lancet, the head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention seemed to suggest he was concerned that his ground strikes were not enough. effective, although Chinese state media quickly withdrew comments.
All vaccine manufacturers Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna hope to use mRNA in a wide range of other vaccines and drugs, after it proved so effective in Covid-19 vaccines. Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, told the Wall Street Journal last month that the technology had “dramatic impact and potential.”
However, Biden has been under political pressure to give up travel and allow developing countries to make their own copies. vaccines which have been developed by pharmaceutical companies without fear of being sued for intellectual property infringements.
Several U.S. Democratic lawmakers, including Earl Blumenauer, Rosa DeLauro, Jan Schakowsky, Bernie Sanders, Tammy Baldwin, and Chuy Garcia, have urged the Biden administration to support a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights.
A group of 175 former world leaders and Nobel laureates, who have urged the U.S. to take “urgent action” to suspend intellectual property, have also supported the resignation. On Friday, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch and other advocacy groups said 2 million people had signed a petition in support of the waiver.
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