Members of the World Trade Organization on Friday Reached a limited agreement It aims to ease the intellectual property protection of the coronavirus vaccine and increase its supply to poor countries.
This measure makes it easier for manufacturers in developing countries to invalidate vaccine patents and export them for sale in other low-income countries.
However, the agreement, which is the result of an ambitious patent waiver proposed nearly two years ago, specializes in being too late to arrive and too modest in scope to have a meaningful impact on global vaccine supply. The house said.
“This doesn’t change us significantly,” said Mihil Mankad, a researcher who advises Doctors Without Borders in the United States on global health advocacy and policy issues.
The important limitation is timing. The production of Covid-19 vaccines by the major pharmaceutical companies that invented them now far exceeds demand. The main obstacle to curbing vaccination rates in low-income countries is not the supply itself, but the challenges of distribution and weapons vaccination.
This agreement does not apply to the testing and treatment of coronavirus. Experts said the pandemic was a more urgent priority at this point and that mitigation of intellectual property protection could significantly increase global supply.
In October 2020, India and South Africa are ambitious in intellectual property rights, based on the WTO’s agreement on trade-related intellectual property rights, as wealthy countries shut out orders for the soon-to-be-available Covid vaccine. Drafted abandonment. TRIPS..
A year ago, poor countries still faced a serious vaccine shortage, and the Biden administration came out in support of this proposal. This move was a significant departure from decades of US-led opposition to the relaxation of intellectual property rules on pharmaceuticals.
Katherine Tai, US Trade Representative, Foretelling Friday trading As “a concrete and meaningful result to get a safer and more effective vaccine for those who need it most”.
But experts said the proposal was significantly weakened in a few months of negotiations. They said they did not expect a final agreement to encourage manufacturers in developing countries to start producing Covid vaccines. This is because it does not correspond to the trade secrets and manufacturing know-how required by many producers.
The pharmaceutical industry, which claims that strong intellectual property protection is essential for innovation, has been fiercely opposed to efforts under the WTO through negotiations.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a leading lobbying group in the industry, has sharply criticized Friday’s agreement. The group’s head, Stephen J. Uble, called it one of a series of “political stunts” and said it “doesn’t help protect people from the virus.” He said the industry has already produced more than 13 billion Covid vaccines.
James Love, head of Knowledge Ecology International, a non-profit organization focused on medical intellectual property, said Friday’s agreement was far less than a waiver of patents, as the WTO’s previous proposal was initially envisioned.
“It may be read by some people like a magical new flexibility,” he said. But the agreement is limited to “taking the most annoying way to export and making it more annoying,” he said.
The Friday agreement clarifies and extends existing mechanisms that enable enforcement. Under this mechanism, the government revokes intellectual property restrictions and allows the manufacture of medicines, usually in emergencies. However, forced implementation has not been easy until now.
Melissa Barber, a researcher studying access to medicines at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, said: “This may be easier, but I don’t think these power dynamics will change.”
