WHO: Waive patent rights

Move would dramatically boost Covid-19 vaccine supply, says head

GENEVA: The head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has called for patent rights to be waived until the end of the coronavirus pandemic so that vaccine supplies can be dramatically increased, saying these “unprecedented times” warrant the move.

At a press briefing on Friday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said countries with their own vaccine capacity should “start waiving intellectual property rights ” as provided in special emergency provisions from the World Trade Organisation.

“These provisions are there for use in emergencies,” he said.

“If now is not a time to use them, then when?”

He said WHO would meet soon with representatives of the industry to identify bottlenecks in production and discuss how to solve them.

The Associated Press found factories on three continents whose owners say they could start producing hundreds of millions of Covid19 vaccines at short notice if only they had the blueprints and technical know-how.

But that knowledge belongs to the large pharmaceutical companies that have produced the first three vaccines authorised by countries including Britain, the European Union and the United States – Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca.

Tedros commended AstraZeneca for sharing its vaccine technology with companies such as the Serum Institute of India, but said “the main disadvantage of this approach is the lack of transparency”.

Pharmaceutical companies that took taxpayer money from the United States or Europe to develop inoculations at unprecedented speed say they are negotiating contracts and exclusive licensing deals with producers on a case-by-case basis as they need to protect their intellectual property and ensure safety. Meanwhile, US drugmaker Merck & Co Inc said yesterday that the experimental antiviral drug molnupiravir it is developing with Ridgeback Bio showed a quicker reduction in infectious virus in its phase 2a study among participants with early Covid-19.

“The secondary objective findings in this study are promising,” said William Fischer, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

The antiviral is being currently tested in a Phase 2/3 trial that is set to be completed in May.