LSPN Connect: The battle for COVID-19 vaccines

With the COVID-19 vaccines developed, we are now faced with the monumental task of distributing hundreds of millions of vaccines across the globe.

There is an increasing disparity between the number of vaccines available for the richest and poorest countries. As the situation grows more desperate, many have called for the temporary waiving of IP rights for vaccines to help provide more equitable access.

The waiver, first presented to the World Trade Organisation by South Africa and India, calls for certain provisions of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement to be waived for IP related to COVID-19 treatments, diagnostics and vaccines.

While many in the IP world are opposed to this idea, pressure has been mounting on governments to back the deal from humanitarian companies, charities and even former world leaders.

In its current form, the proposal calls for certain provisions of the TRIPS agreement to be waived for “at least three years” before being reviewed.

However, there would need to be a unanimous vote from the WTO members in order to reverse the waiver once it was implemented.

LSPN Connect welcomed former director of the US Patent and Trademark Office Andrei Iancu and Fifa Rahman, NGO representative on the WHO Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator and module assistant for the School of Law at the University of Leeds to discuss the proposed waiver.

A ‘radical’ proposition

Kicking off the discussion, Rahman supported the waiver, claiming “Current efforts such as COVAX and compulsory licensing have been unable to deliver, resulting in many avoidable deaths.

“Waiving TRIPS provisions is the first step in providing more vaccines, it also needs to come alongside tech sharing, facility space etc.”

Iancu called it a “radical, never before seen waiver”. He said that its proponents have failed to give evidence that show waiving these provisions will result in more vaccines going to less developed countries.

“There is a lot of hyperbole surrounding the issue and all I am looking for is evidence that waiving IP provisions will work. This is a broad-based attack. It is the misuse of a global crisis to weaken IP rights. It is not a new effort to undermine TRIPS, it has gone on for years,” Iancu added. He noted that the current proposal contained no guarantee it would in fact be reversed in three years if implemented.

“There is concern that the waiver of vaccines won’t end after three years, but if people are still dying, then it shouldn’t end,” Rahman added.

“An IP waiver would ensure that manufacturers would not be able to block the production of these vaccines or access to the raw materials. Lots of people who are anti-waiver say IP is not a key issue, instead it is capacity, but this is incorrect.”

‘Part of the solution’

Instead of sacrificing IP protections, which Iancu said were part of the reason the vaccines were possible, he cited vaccine hoarding and logistical barriers as the key reasons more people in poorer countries are not being vaccinated.

“Public discussions need to be had in individual countries, to address vaccine nationalism,” Iancu said.

“Simple logistics are also an issue,” he added. “Refrigerator trucks need to be more widely available and local regulatory issues need to be addressed  to make sure that, when a country receives a shipment of vaccines, they are equipped to distribute them effectively.”

“This is an ongoing situation and the world needs to take a long-term perspective. Boosters will need to be given, new vaccines will need to be continuously manufactured etc. IP rights are part of the solution to these problems.”

Rahman responded: “I agree, but not everyone has equal footing in this situation. A lot of the issues are being addressed purely by the global north without ongoing discussions from Low-to-Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) and the global south.

“This has led to situations like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) returning vaccines to COVAX as they weren’t ready to mobilise yet. There is a need to develop capacity in the global south, but these initiatives need to be global south led.”

You can watch the full discussion here.

LSPN Connect is the membership programme for the Life Sciences—to watch on this session and for more information on joining, visit  www.lspnconnect.com

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