A suggestion to waive patent restrictions on COVID-19 vaccines has been rejected by multi-billionaire Bill Gates, who said he doesn’t believe the intellectual property has anything to do with the drawn-out global effort to rein in the pandemic.
New York.- Vaccines developed by pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and Moderna enjoy global protection under the World Trade Organization (WTO). Considering the scarcity of medicines, there have been increasing calls from countries like India and South Africa, international relief organizations, and public figures to waive those protections so that poorer countries can get better access to medicines.
However, one of the most publicized figures in the global vaccination campaign, Bill Gates, apparently believes it’s a bad idea. When asked by Sky News’ Sophy Ridge if stripping intellectual property protections from vaccine recipes would be helpful, the founder of Microsoft responded with an emphatic “No.”
“The thing that’s holding things back, in this case, is not intellectual property. It’s not like there’s some idle vaccine factory, with regulatory approval, that makes magically safe vaccines. You know, you’ve got to do the trial on these things. Every manufacturing process has to be looked at in a very careful way,” he explained.
There are all sorts of issues around intellectual property having to do with medicines. But not in terms of how quickly we’ve been able to ramp up the volume here.
Gates cited his foundation’s experience in helping to organize vaccine production in developing nations like India and said the fact that poor nations would likely have a chance to get supplies from rich ones as soon as they immunize their own populations was a success. “Typically, in global health, it takes a decade between when a vaccine comes into the rich world and when it gets into the poor countries,” he noted.
Political observers say that Bill Gates speaks as if all the lives being lost in India are inevitable but eventually the West will help when in reality the U.S. and UK are placing their knee on the neck of developing states by refusing to break TRIPS protections.
Both Gates and his foundation are long-time defenders of intellectual property protections, and now critics are accusing Gates of deliberately wasting an opportunity to help reshape how intellectual property works for matters of the greater public good. The COVID-19 ACT-Accelerator mechanism, backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has a stated goal of providing “equitable access” to anti-Covid tools – but it also respects the exclusive intellectual property rights. At the same time, Gates has apparently been snubbing the alternative solution, known as COVID-19 Technology Access Pool, or C-TAP, which would pool open-source technologies on how to deal with the pandemic.
Big Pharma is quite happy with the status quo and has reportedly been engaged in its own effort to sink the waiver proposal. According to a Sunday report by the Financial Times, U.S. pharmaceutical companies have been rattled by a recent WTO speech by Joe Biden’s top trade official Katherine Tai, in which she said Washington could “consider what modifications and reforms” can be applied to intellectual property rules.
FT sources say that, in response, companies have been trying to convince the White House that China and Russia would benefit from patent exposure, using the proprietary US technologies “for other vaccines or even therapeutics for conditions such as cancer and heart problems in the future.”
CORONAVIRUS INFECTIONS HIT NEW GLOBAL HIGH, FUELED BY INDIA'S OUTBREAK
Geneva.- The COVID-19 pandemic has reached a new record high, with the number of daily global infections now averaging more than 820,000, led by a massive outbreak in India.
The World Health Organization says the pandemic is still in its acute phase, with a ninth straight week of rising infections. Almost 5.7 million cases were reported last week alone, which the WHO says is certain to be an underestimate.
In Geneva, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom said: “Many countries are still experiencing intense transmission, and the situation in India is beyond heartbreaking.”
In related news, the Joe Biden administration said Monday it would share up to 60 million doses of the U.S.-manufactured AstraZeneca vaccine with other nations. That’s enough for 30 million people, about 0.4% of the world’s population.
Critics of the move say that Biden is not trying to do anyone a favor. The AstraZeneca vaccine is not approved for use in the United States. (RHC)
