Thursday, March 28, 2024 -
Print Edition

A patent waiver on COVID-19 vaccines would not save one additional life

The delay in vaccinating poor countries is not an issue of patents

Sounds so simple, so right, so necessary: Temporarily waive the patents of the drugmakers so that COVID-19 vaccines can get to the poor countries on the globe. Why should only the wealthy countries benefit?

The assumption here is that if only the drugmakers would be flexible, lives would be saved.

National self-interest and industrial realities — not proprietary technology —prevent almost all of the globe’s poor countries from having the vaccines now. In a nutshell: Why aren’t pharmaceutical companies delivering more doses to poor countries? Because the same wealthy countries making the demand are scooping up the initial production of vaccines for themselves. National self-interest rules.

But isn’t there a worldwide distribution system to prevent this?

The Wall Street Journal reported on the failure of the global distribution system, the “COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility,” or Covax. It was designed to enable all countries to order their vaccines from a collective vaccine pool. Every country would have equal access. Every country, including the poorest ones, would first inoculate their front line health workers, then their populations.

This was one of those well intended ideas that inexperienced do-gooders make work perfectly — on paper. Then they fail — miserably. Right now, 0.7% of Zambia has received a first shot. It’s like this around the world.

Why?

It has absolutely nothing to do with patents.

• Only one site in the world was selected for the production of the world’s collective pool of vaccines — in India. When India’s COVID-19 rate skyrocketed, India, rather than spreading the millions of doses evenly around the world, took them for itself. Perfectly understandable for India. Perfectly poor planning for a worldwide campaign. No patent waiver would have made a difference.

• The same thing happened in the European Union. Limited vaccine supplies — limited, that is, on the world scale — induced the EU to buy shots for its 450 million citizens. Other countries, which couldn’t afford to do that, would have to wait. Patent adjustments would not have changed that. The problem is not lack of access to anti-vaccine technology; the problem is the impossibility of producing enough vaccines for everybody at once. The richer countries buy them first.

But shouldn’t the financial burden be shared?

• It should. But not all countries signed on to the “COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility.” Not all countries wanted to donate to a central fund, viable for the whole world. Russia didn’t. China didn’t. Initially, the US didn’t. And the world is a very big place. Even with the participation in Covax of many countries and of philanthropies as big as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, there wasn’t enough money to enable the poorer countries to buy any of the first doses of the vaccines. Countries wanted to protect their own populations first and it was the wealthy countries who first developed the vaccines or had the funds to buy them. Patent waivers would not have changed this.

But shouldn’t there be enough vaccines for all countries to begin with?

• Manufacturers cannot produce the vaccines fast enough. We’re not talking about a few million, or even a few hundred million doses. We are talking about billions of doses. Manufacturers cannot produce them overnight because of the shortages of raw materials. Neither good intentions nor patent waivers can produce more raw material overnight.

But manufacturers could do better, couldn’t they?

• In a perfect world, yes. But consider: 200 million doses of one vaccine didn’t come through because the clinical trials were done wrong. Another batch of 1.1 billion doses was delayed because clinical trials had to be delayed. An expected deal for 500 million doses got reduced to 200 million doses. Another deal calls for 500 million doses — 466 million of which are to be delivered only in 2022. China’s vaccine makers disclose nothing. No patent waivers would change any of this.

Wouldn’t a patent waiver enable other entities besides current vaccine producers to build more plants to produce more vaccines now?

• Covax is trying to set up new plants. Vaccine producers are participating. A patent waiver would not speed up this work, and will not produce a couple of billion doses to save lives in unvaccinated countries now.

All of this is before we even get to the three intrinsic reasons not to waive US patents:

1. Do not de-motivate the companies whose detractors said they could never produce a viable vaccine in a year. But they did. They are to be praised, not punished.

2. Do not de-motivate the other innovative American companies who, seeing the US give away patents in one arena, would have to wonder whether they’re next.

3. Do not motivate other nations to evade all of the other American patent protections.

A worldwide, complex, medical, national, industrial, distribution and scientific issue cannot be reduced to a black-and-white, essentially unrelated solution, such as patent waivers.

Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News




Leave a Reply