Drugmakers slam US-supported vaccine patent waiver

DRUGMAKERS yesterday said US President Joe Biden’s support for waiving patents of Covid-19 vaccines could disrupt a fragile supply chain and that rich countries should instead share more generously with the developing world.

Biden threw his support behind waiving intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines, angering researchbased pharmaceutical companies. If adopted by the World Trade Organization, the proposal would invite new manufacturers that lack essential know-how and oversight from the inventors to crowd out established contractors, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) said. “I have heard many (vaccine makers) talking about ‘our resources are stretched, our technicians are stretched’,” IFPMA director general Thomas Cueni said. He warned of a possible free-for-all if “sort of rogue companies” were allowed to become involved.

Vaccine developers echoed his comments that waiving intellectual property rights was not a solution.

Germany’s CureVac, which hopes to release trial results on its messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccine as early as this month, said patents were not to blame for supply bottlenecks.

“Since mRNA technology has emerged as the key technology in the fight against Covid-19, the world now needs the same raw materials in unfathomable amounts. The biggest problem is how to co-ordinate this,” a spokesperson said. IFPMA’s Cueni said the real bottlenecks were trade barriers, in particular the US Defence Production Act (DPA).

The DPA is a decades-old US law that prioritised procurement orders related to US national defence, but it has been widely used in non-military crises, such as natural disasters.

Cueni said the way to kick-start low-income countries’ vaccination campaigns was for rich countries to donate vaccine, rather than widen eligibility to young and healthy people at home.

Moderna said waiving intellectual property rights would not help increase supply of its vaccines in 2021 and 2022. The US drugmaker said last year it would not enforce its vaccine patents. CureVac said yesterday it would also not enforce its patents during the pandemic and that it knew of no other developer that would.

The GaviI vaccine alliance, which co-leads the Covax programme with the WHO, welcomed support for a waiver.