By Catarina Vila Nova
They told us not to hold our breath. That the development of a brand new vaccine takes years – decades maybe – to be accomplished. Take a look at HIV, cancer or malaria. Years and decades and thousands of people and dollars poured into each one of these researches and we’re nowhere near of finding a cure. Bottom line: don’t get your hopes up for a COVID vaccine in the near future.
But then, just a few months after Coronavirus took over our lives, good news started coming from the West. Maybe in the first half of 2021 we will have a COVID vaccine, they hoped. No, wait! Still this year, if all goes well, the first people will receive their first doses of the so-long awaited magic potion, they promised.
It felt like a Christmas miracle. On December 8thof the infamous year of 2020, a UK grandmother became the first person in the world to receive the COVID vaccine. Margaret Keenan called it the “best early birthday present”. On December 27ththe rest of Europe would follow with its own vaccination program and slowly but steadily the elixir is reaching all four corners of the world.
How come something that was warned would never arrive in less than five years’ time suddenly was readily available in just 10 months? Was it really a Christmas miracle? Of course not!
Never before was the effort of scientists, big pharma, private corporations and governments pooled together in such a concerted (humanitarian?) effort. The timeline was reduced not because shortcuts were taken – as some conspiracy theorists like to denounce – but because of the blood, sweat and tears (and money) of teams of scientists and national governments.
Now the question that still remains is: what should be the price tag of the COVID vaccine? Can or should Big Pharma corporations be able to profit from such an unprecedented health crisis? One might argue that, at the end of the day, these companies are still profit-driven businesses and why should it be otherwise? More: shouldn’t they be somehow rewarded for accomplishing such an epic deed?
On the other hand, it seems almost devilish and Machiavellian that anyone would make a profit after this brutal pandemic. Yes, Big Pharma should get paid for putting the vaccine out there. No, they shouldn’t get paid more than the production costs. Let’s not forget how much money public entities invested in these vaccines in the first place: of the 9.19 billion euros poured into the AstraZeneca vaccine, 1.5 billion euros came from governments. In total, governments have provided 7.2 billion euros and not-for-profit organizations another 1.6 billion euros to fund eight different vaccines.
And how much are these companies expecting to profit from the COVID vaccines? Even though the real profit is only expected to come when Coronavirus is no longer causing a pandemic the numbers are not that small in the short term: Pfizer and BioNTech can expect 24 billion dollars in revenues this year, which is equal to seven billion in profit for each company, whereas Moderna can cash in almost 30 billion dollars in revenues.
The vaccine is here, great! Now what?
Putting a price tag on such a limited and highly requested good means that those who can, pay. Those who can’t, wait. And wait. And wait a bit longer. Essentially wait until everyone in the rich countries gets their doses. When that happens – which might take the same time or even longer than it took for the first vaccines to be out – the first batches will have been exhausted and production will have to restart.
Just look at the numbers: the UK and Canada reserved enough vaccines to cover more than 300% of their population! The United States made sure that they could vaccinate 169% of their citizens, the Netherlands will have the capacity to vaccinate 183% of Dutch people and Australia reserved vaccines to reach 230% of its population.
While 40 countries hoarded more vaccines than they needed for their entire populations, 94 other nations will be able to vaccinate only 5% of their citizens. These are, for example, Afghanistan, Brunei, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Liberia. The same countries that have the least capacity to fight the Coronavirus because of their fragile health infrastructures and ravaging socio-economic problems are the exact same countries that will be the last ones to receive the much needed vaccines.
More alarming even is the current pace of vaccination: so far more than 30.5 million doses have been administered in only 43 countries. The UK has given 4.3 doses per 100 people in a total of 2.8 million doses; the United States 3 doses per 100 people in a total of 9.9 million doses and Spain stands as 1.1 dose per 100 people in a total of 488 thousand doses.
In contrast, if we look at the World Map of Vaccinations, Africa stands out as a blank continent. The only exception is Guinea which has only given out 55 doses so far in a population of 12.77 million (which is equal to 0.0004 doses per 100 people).
Let’s take the COVID vaccine on a TRIP around the world, shall we?
One of the possible solutions to this obvious problem of economic inequality could be a temporary waiver suspending TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) obligations on all medical products needed to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Such resolution would address this problem at its core: there simply aren’t enough vaccines for the entire world population because not enough pharmaceuticals are producing them and this is because the ones who hold the patent for the COVID vaccine are unwilling to let it go.
What exactly is the TRIPS Agreement? It has been enforced by the World Trade Organization (WTO) since 1995 and in a nutshell “introduced minimum standards for protecting and enforcing nearly all forms of intellectual property rights (IPR), including those for patents”. Following this agreement, all WTO members are required to adapt their laws to the minimum standards of IPR protection.
How can it be used to ensure equal global access to the COVID vaccine? Last October, India and South Africa, as members of the WTO, suggested the Council for TRIPS a “Waiver from certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreements for the prevention, containment and treatment of COVID-19”. Their request was motivated by the righteous concern that intellectual property rights such as patents, industrial designs, copyright and protection of undisclosed information could “create barriers to the timely access to affordable medical products including vaccines”.
This waiver would cover obligations of the TRIPS Agreement connected with copyright and related rights, industrial designs, patents and the protection of undisclosed information. In their request, India and South Africa issued an “urgent call for global solidarity and the unhindered global sharing of technology and know-how” and warned that the “WTO would not succeed in its efforts to rebuild the COVID-19 affected economies unless it acts now to first save those lives that are going to build these economies”.
No conclusion was reached at the first meeting of the TRIPS Council to discuss this waiver besides continuing to discuss the matter. The proposition received the support of countries like Eswatini, Kenya, Mozambique, Pakistan and Bolivia, who officially joined as co-sponsors of the proposal, plus other 100 nations who have either welcomed or fully supported it, including China.
However, important WTO members such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, the UK and the US are withholding their support, claiming that “IP rights are not the hurdle they are made out to be, since voluntary licensing and global facilities like COVAX[1]can help poorer countries meet their needs effectively”.
Why is this such a blatant lie? AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna estimate a total production capacity of 5.3 billion doses for 2021, which could cover between 2.6 billion and 3.1 billion people. About half of this total capacity has been pre-ordered by the 27 member states of the European Union together with five other rich countries which, together, only account for around 13% of the global population.
[1]COVAX is one of the three pillars of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerations, which was launched by the World Health Organizations, the European Commission and France in response to this pandemic. It claims to be the only effort to ensure that people in all corners of the world will get access to COVID-19 once they are available, regardless of their wealth.