Debate over waivering vaccine patent rights

COVID-19 is crushing developing countries such as India, Brazil and South Africa, and it won’t help to simply tinker with the patents on life-saving vaccines made by a handful of pharmaceutical companies.

It’s more crucial that the industry’s manufacturing and distribution expertise be brought to bear on this epic challenge. Access to a recipe without access to an oven and serving trays won’t put food in anyone’s hands.

There’s another element missing from this nascent rescue plan: sophisticated and effective public-private partnerships. Operation Warp Speed, one of the signature successes of the Trump administration, which otherwise bungled its pandemic response, worked because the federal government provided a financial backstop for companies to help them take on the myriad risks of vaccine development.

The White House seeded Warp Speed with $10 billion (about R141bn) in federal funds. That money accelerated drug development – by allowing companies to conduct trials and make vaccines on parallel tracks – and offered a guaranteed market. The government became the buyer and stripped away production and sales uncertainties. Presto, risk removed.

A small group of pharmaceutical companies – including AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Novavax, Pfizer and Sanofi – received the lion’s share of Warp Speed funding and support. As we now know, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson ultimately brought drugs to market that changed the pandemic’s course. Pfizer, which also produced a miracle drug in record time, opted not to take federal money. But it was nevertheless assured that Warp Speed would buy its vaccine if approved. And Pfizer’s partner, BioNTech, got $445million from the German government to help the smaller company develop and manufacture its innovative messenger RNA technology.

All of this government aid highlights another flaw in the debate over Covid-19 vaccine intellectual property and whether the Biden administration is right to support waiving patents temporarily. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is reviewing a proposal to do that, and some pharmaceutical companies and Wall Street analysts have complained that any such measure would amount to pickpocketing.

Patents and IP laws have always existed, ideally, to protect the brainchildren of innovators and guarantee that they get their rightful share of the bounty from popular or groundbreaking products. In more recent decades, big companies have used patent claims to stifle competitors.

The pharmaceutical industry should be compensated for creativity and risk-taking, of course, and protected from theft. But drug companies, often buttressed with public funding, have also used patents to squelch rivals and maintain lucrative pricing regimes, even when that isn’t in the public interest. Just think back to the criticism directed at Gilead Sciences last year for how it priced remdesivir, which it touted as a Covid-19 remedy.

The vaccines on the market didn’t spring into existence solely because of private capital. Taxpayers helped foot a substantial part of the bill, and their interests should be served as well. Moderna, which arguably would never have brought a drug to market without government aid, has already said it won’t enforce its vaccine patent rights during the pandemic.

So the Biden administration has some reason to support the patent waiver under consideration at the WTO.

But even if the waiver goes through, it won’t remove the bigger obstacles in the way of getting vaccines to developing countries. That will take more public-private partnerships. For an Operation Warp Speed to take root in countries such as India or Brazil, their political leaders will need as much public leverage as the US and Europe were able to apply. Unfortunately, these countries’ leaders, Narendra Modi in India and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, have both paraded doctrinaire free-market agendas at the expense of constructive public planning. Engineering a public-private response to Covid-19 may elude them.

Operation Warp Speed proved that public-private partnerships can create the force needed to mount a huge and effective vaccine program. Waiving patents won’t matter without a broader local push to develop, manufacture and distribute vaccines at reasonable prices. Governments in developing countries need to play a pivotal role in that process, and too many of them don’t appear to be up to the task.

IT WAS not going to be hard to look like a shining star after four years of former US president Donald Trump, but President Joe Biden has exceeded expectations in his first 100 days.

The 100th day in office was April 30, but one of Biden’s most impressive decisions was announced just five days later – one that matters to South Africa and the developing world.

On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced that it was in support of waiving intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines, which was a breakthrough for international efforts to suspend patent rules.

With the pandemic raging in India and Latin-America, and a third wave expected in our own country, the decision has the potential to be lifesaving for many. South Africa and India have been pushing for a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights, so that countries can address the pandemic, and vaccines can be made for public good.

At the recent G7 Summit, some countries pushed back against the proposal, arguing for free markets and open economies – which were never in dispute. South Africa and India have never challenged the notions. But the pandemic is an emergency, and as Minister for International Relations and Cooperation Naledi Pandor said in an interview on Wednesday with Christiane Amanpour: “We need to meet the challenge confronting all of us because all of us are unsafe if one of us is unsafe. We don’t want to develop complex new variants.”

The US had been a major holdout at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to suspend intellectual property rights in an effort to ramp up vaccine production. But Biden had been under pressure to support the proposals, even from many congressional Democrats. Biden finally took a decision in the interest of the greater public good, something Trump was unlikely to ever do.

Katherine Tai, Biden’s US trade representative said on Wednesday: “This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures. The administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for Covid19 vaccines.”

Now it is up to the WTO to hammer out an agreement in upcoming negotiations.

The US could do a lot more in terms of supporting the developing world with vaccines. Promises of sending 60 million unused AstraZeneca doses to developing countries is hardly sufficient. Less than 2% of the world’s Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in Africa, and the continent is in dire need of assistance.

What Biden has done in his country, in terms of rolling out Covid19 vaccinations, is nothing short of phenomenal. When he took office in January, Biden pledged 100 million vaccine doses in his first 100 days. At the end of March, he doubled that commitment. While Trump rolled out 16 million vaccine doses, Biden has rolled out 220 million in his first 100 days in office. He has taken the politics out of vaccines and mask wearing, and delivered on his promises in an understated and humble way. He has not praised himself for the accomplishments, but rather told people “it is because of you”. The approach has been a welcome contrast to the politics of ego perpetrated by Trump.

The mass vaccination rollout in the US has changed cities across the country from ghost towns to buzzing hubs of commerce and life again. Take a city like Nashville, the home of country music. Just months ago, bars and restaurants were empty, businesses were hardly functioning and people were holed up in their homes as the pandemic surged, causing devastation and untold suffering among the local population. By the end of last month, most of the population had been vaccinated, bars are full again and staying open until 3am, weddings are taking place everywhere, and people have taken their lives back. Many credit Biden for the turnaround.

Biden has also succeeded in reviving the US economy with the $1.9 trillion (about R27 trillion) stimulus package that he signed in March.

In his address to the US Congress, Biden was correct when he said that he had created 1.3 million new jobs – more jobs in the first 100 days than any president on record.

Biden easily relates to average working-class people, and his infrastructure and family plans have broad backing. His initiatives on preschool, public community college, paid family and medical leave, and home care are popular, as are his proposals to increase taxes on corporations and the wealthy in order to pay for infrastructure and education.

Biden had entered office promising a real commitment to diversity, and he has made good on this promise if one looks at his confirmed nominees, in which there are a higher proportion of women and non-whites than any of his three predecessors. Lloyd Austin is the first African-American to be the secretary of defence, Deb Haaland will be the first Native-American to be a cabinet member and secretary of the interior, Janet Yellen the first woman to be secretary of the treasury, and Alejandro Mayorkas will be the first Latino and immigrant to run the Department of Homeland Security. The appointments have been hailed as trail-blazing.

Biden has also taken initiatives to end police brutality and root out systemic racism in the US system. The moves come as anger grows over the killing of another Black man, Daunte Wright, who was stopped by police just miles from where George Floyd was killed last May. While there are good intentions on the part of the Biden administration, there appears to be no immediate path to broad national reform according to activists. The Biden administration will put its weight behind a broad reform bill, known as the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, while revamping the Justice Department, which holds the administration’s most tangible power over police departments.

Biden has successfully undone much of what Trump did through executive orders, and by April 23 he had undone 62 of the 219 executive orders signed by the former president. He has recommitted the US to the Paris Climate Change Agreement, reversed the US exit from the WHO, and stopped construction of the border wall. He is more popular than Trump was on any day of his presidency.

While we should praise the positive developments in the US, we also acknowledge there is much work to be done in terms of the US strengthening relations with Africa and the developing world, forging normal trade and diplomatic relations with Cuba, recommitting the US to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action without conditions, forging positive and constructive relations with China, and reducing America’s military footprint abroad.