It is not yet the abolition of the patent on vaccines. But it is an important step in that direction. US President Joe Biden said he supports the call to suspend the intellectual property of pharmaceutical companies to increase production of the vials, as long as the pandemic continues. The request was made by India and South Africa – two of the countries most affected by the coronavirus – last October to the World Trade Organization. The WTO had always had an easy time rejecting the application. But over time, the snowball began to get bigger, until it became an avalanche.
Nobel laureates and political leaders during the pandemic had joined the call from poorer countries and non-governmental organizations. Two weeks ago 160 former heads of government and Nobel Prize winners for medicine and economics (Romano Prodi and Mario Monti had signed for Italy) appealed to Biden: “From the pandemic, no one is sure until everyone is at sure ”they wrote, recalling that at the current rate the entire world population would be vaccinated only in 2024. The American president in recent weeks had made it clear that he was not insensitive to the subject. The tragedy of India has only increased the urgency.
“This is a worldwide health crisis. The extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for equally extraordinary measures. The administration strongly believes in the need to protect intellectual property, but in order to end the pandemic, it supports the idea of a suspension of its vaccines, ”said White House trade representative Katherine Tai. “The administration – he added, making it clear that he was not speaking in a personal capacity, but on behalf of the president – will actively participate in the negotiations of the World Trade Organization”. The president of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called it a “historic decision” and a “monumental step in the fight against Covid”. The shares of the pharmaceutical companies, on the other hand, ended the session at a loss on the stock exchange.
“These negotiations will take time,” Tai added, concluding his speech. The next round tables on the subject are expected at the end of May and June. The suspension of patents would still be a historic decision, but it would not solve the problem of vaccine shortages with a magic wand. The case of Europe teaches this. The best provisions of pharmaceutical companies in our continent have clashed with reality: suitable plants are in short supply, vaccines against Covid are innovative products that are difficult to manufacture, raw materials are throttled in a condition of lack of supply. There is also a lack of technicians specialized in handling such delicate products.
An increase in production, where there has been, has so far only occurred with the method of assigning licenses between companies in the sector: Pfizer has transmitted to Novartis (this is just one example of what has happened in Europe in recent months) the know-how to manufacture RNA vaccines against the payment of royalties. Novartis has invested to create ad hoc production lines. Two historically rival Big Pharmas have entered into a marriage of convenience to produce more vials. Even the director of the WTO, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Nigerian, said she favored this path, over the suspension of patents. We should “promote licensing agreements that allow for increased production,” he wrote in an editorial in the Financial Times in early March.
Would abolishing patents – the skeptics argue – would allow technology-poor countries to manufacture RNA vaccines or viral vectors, using methods never (or almost never) used before for other vaccines? Answering is not easy. But the scope of the decision would be historic. Only in World War II did the United States decide to suspend intellectual property to produce more penicillin for soldiers at the front. Today, even if it would not solve all the problems, the choice would perhaps make trading in instruments and raw materials more fluid. And it would make more concrete a phrase that many have repeated, and then behave in exactly the opposite way: from a pandemic we all come out together. Or it doesn’t come out.
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