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Waiving intellectual property rights so developing countries could produce more vaccines would make a big difference in reaching global herd immunity. Otherwise, the pandemic will rage largely unmitigated among a significant share of the world’s population, resulting in increased deaths and a greater risk that a vaccine-resistant variant puts the world back on lockdown.
... Firms in the Global South are already making covid-19 vaccines. For example, South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare has produced hundreds of millions of doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, even though only a fraction of those went to South Africans. Other drug corporations simply refuse to work with qualified manufacturers in developing countries, effectively blocking more production.
Not one vaccine originator has shared technologies with poor countries through the World Health Organization’s voluntary Covid-19 Technology Access Pool. The global Covax program, which aims to vaccinate 20 percent of developing countries’ most vulnerable populations, has delivered about 38 million doses to 100 countries; meanwhile, the United States administers 3 million doses daily.
There is no way to beat covid-19 without increasing vaccine production capacity. And some production must be in the Global South for a host of reasons, including that prompt suppression of new variants is how we avoid more deaths and quarantines.
India suffers many ills, including rising sectarianism and illiberalism, but it has a large, competent medical supply industry. Given the chance, it could make vaccines for its own people and much of the world. The United States should stop playing a huge part in preventing this natural development in a situation of global threat.
The U.S. is shipping medical supplies to India, but how about assisting Indians to help themselves?
4 comments:
Problem with this post... If I recall properly India is a vaccine producer, with two domestically developed and approved COVID-19 vaccines that appear to be reasonably effective and available in quantity. Implicitly blaming the US for India's current problems is not honest. I think you need look no further than India's own government to understand much of the current disaster that is unfolding there.
India is definitely a vaccine producer -- if the world is ever to have enough shots, the way will probably go through India. Apparently the Modi government completely screwed up its coronavirus response, including selling off its vaccines. The author of this is the mentor of a friend: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/modis-pandemic-choice-protect-his-image-or-protect-india-he-chose-himself/2021/04/28/44cc0d22-a79e-11eb-bca5-048b2759a489_story.html
As for my emphasis on the vaccine patents and intellectual property: this is a long time bugaboo of mine. Taxpayers pay for research, then somebody ends up owning and profiting from it.
And the US simply can't afford to be nationalistic about vaccines -- even if only for prudential reasons if not moral ones.
I agree that profiting from taxpayer funded research is an issue, my personal pet peeve on that one is pay walls on access to scientific papers that were paid for by federal or state grants.
Just that the current India situation is a very poor case to use in this argument. The primary fault for the current situation there is probably the Modi government primarily and a few other secondary factors coming together to create a complete disaster.
Wish to discuss vaccine availability in Nicaragua, Senegal, or some other country that has no capable vaccine development infrastructure for something like COVID? There you might have a better case.
On the IP side it gets more complicated, even as it is often abused, IP rights do spur investment in technologies and allow the companies to recoup those investments. The rate of tech innovation and much of our economy depends on IP law. The basic RNA vaccine tech behind the successful vaccines currently used in the US was in development for at least a decade before COVID came along, developed by the companies on their dime for use on other diseases.
As far as I can tell, if Nicaraguans are going to have any chance of vaccination, it will be through the help of Cuba. Apparently Cuba is close to developing its own vaccine and they have the developed medical industrial infrastructure to produce one. If there is not a raw material bottleneck ...
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