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Pressure mounts to lift patent protections on coronavirus vaccines
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Thomas Kaplan and Rebecca Robbins New York Times,Updated May 3, 2021, 9:50 p.m.
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President Biden spoke at Tidewater Community College on Monday in Portsmouth, Va.Evan Vucci/Associated Press
WASHINGTON â President Joe Biden, faced with surging COVID-19 crises in India and South America, is under intensifying pressure from the international community and his partyâs left flank to commit to increasing the vaccine supply by loosening patent and intellectual property protections on coronavirus vaccines.
Pharmaceutical and biotech companies, also feeling pressure, sought on Monday to head off such a move, which could cut into future profits and jeopardize their business model. Pfizer and Moderna, two major vaccine-makers, each announced steps to increase the supply of vaccine around the world.
(NYTIMES) - I ve had my first Covid-19 vaccine jab, drawn from the limited supply of the AstraZeneca doses that has made its way to the developing world. As a senior, I m part of a so-called priority sector eligible to receive it in the Philippines, a country where less than 0.3 per cent of the population has been fully vaccinated - versus 32 per cent in the United States. I m one of the lucky ones.
Globally, more than 1.16 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered as of Monday. Over 80 per cent have gone to people in high- or upper-middle-income countries and only 0.2 per cent to those in low-income countries like the Philippines. At present, India is suffering from a devastating surge of the virus, with over 350,000 infections and 3,000 deaths recorded daily over the past few days. (These figures most likely undercount the full extent of the horror.) Only 2 per cent of its people have been fully vaccinated. While US President Joe Biden s recent deployment of aid to
jgomez@bio.org
Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath, president and CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), sent a letter to President Joe Biden yesterday suggesting the establishment of a COVID Global Strategy for Harnessing Access Reaching Everyone (SHARE) Program, to be implemented immediately.
The letter, which is chalked full of policy solutions, is a response to the “worsening COVID crises in India, Brazil and elsewhere.”
The Global SHARE Program would consist of three parts:
1) Ensuring sufficient global supply of vaccines;
2) Ensuring safe and expeditious global access to vaccines and therapeutics; and
3) Ongoing Efforts to strengthen and support healthcare systems in low-and middle-income countries in addressing COVID.
As COVID-19 cases continue to rise in India and other countries, advocates and lawmakers have called on President Joe Biden’s administration to do more to help boost vaccinations globally. Along with requests for sharing the U.S. vaccine supply, advocates have put pressure on the Biden administration to waive pharmaceutical companies’ patents, which would boost global manufacturing of the vaccine. Despite the dire crisis unfolding in India and elsewhere, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News have largely neglected to cover the Biden administration’s failure so far to waive the patents.
India is currently experiencing a deadly surge of COVID-19 cases as the second wave has led to millions of people infected with the virus in only a few short months. The end of April saw over 48,000 monthly deaths; the country recorded 400,000 thousand new cases in one day, and experts say actual case numbers could be “five to 10 times higher than those reported.” Hospitals have run out of beds and oxyge