PROHIBITING PATENTS

WTO set to weigh measure next week

WHO pushes for waiver of vaccine intellectual property rights.

The director-general of the World Health Organization on Friday renewed calls to waive some intellectual property rights for COVID-19vaccines, a move he said is needed to boost global supply and ensure greater access for poorer countries — requisites for ending the pandemic.

“Flexibilities in trade regulations exist for emergencies, and surely a global pandemic, which has forced many societies to shut down and caused so much harm to business — both large and small — qualifies,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote in an op-ed in the Guardian published Friday, railing against what he called “a ‘me first’ approach to vaccination.”

“We need to be on a war footing, and it’s important to be clear about what is needed,” he wrote.

In recent days, Tedros has made his most pointed plea yet for the waiver of some patents — the intellectual property protections behind vaccine formulations — for COVID-19 vaccines and medical supplies. The 164-member World Trade Organization is deadlocked over a proposal to do so put forward by India and South Africa on behalf of countries with little or no vaccine doses. The idea has been roundly opposed by the U.S. and other Western countries where major pharmaceutical companies are based.

“If a temporary waiver to patents cannot be issued now, during these unprecedented times, when will be the right time?” Tedros tweeted Thursday. “Solidarity is the only way out.”

The WTO is set to meet virtually next week, following a deadlock over the matter in meetings Monday and Tuesday. The WTO works via consensus, meaning that all member nations must agree on any measure.

Though the development of the COVID-19 vaccines has happened at an extraordinarily rapid pace, their rollout is still in the early stages. The vast majority of the 225 million doses so far administered have been in wealthy, Western countries, Tedros said. Public health experts have warned that the longer the virus circulates globally among unvaccinated populations, the greater chance there is of more easily transmissible variants developing.

Supporters of the waivers want to trigger an emergency license, laid out in the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which would temporarily suspend the intellectual property rights for making vaccines and related medical supplies. They say this is necessary because the restof the world cannot continue to wait for the lifesaving shots.

A spokesperson for U.S. Trade Representative Adam Hodge said in an email last week that the Biden administration “is evaluating the efficacy of this specific proposal by its true potential to save lives.”

Opponents of the WHO proposal say that waiving the intellectual property rights would diminish the financial incentive for companies to invest the time and money in future research and development.

Andrew Widger, a spokesperson for Pfizer, one of the U.S. producers of a COVID-19 vaccine, said in an email that the company “will consider all viable options” to ensure that drugs against COVID-19 are accessible, but he said calls for waiving patents disregards “the specific circumstances of each situation, each product and each country.”

Representatives for Moderna and AstraZeneca, two other major Western companies producing COVID-19 vaccines, did not respond to requests for comment.

Mustaqeem De Gama, an intellectual property expert and South Africa’s WTO representative, said he disagreed with the argument that waiving intellectual property rights would diminish the incentive for future research.

During the HIV/AIDS crisis, the WTO agreed on a licensing model that expanded affordable access to lifesaving medicines for patients, particularly in hard-hit sub-Saharan Africa, and it included in it mechanisms for compensating companies. The fastpaced development of the current COVID-19 vaccines — which involved companies taking very expensive research risks — was also bolstered by funding from the American and British governments, he said.

“Waiving patents temporarily won’t mean innovators miss out,” Tedros wrote in the Guardian on Friday. “Like during the HIV crisis or in a war, companies will be paid royalties for the products they manufacture.”