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Experts who’ve spoken to The Washington Times said the Trump administration did a good job in placing a number of bets on multiple vaccine companies using various technology platforms.
The strategy paid off, with a pair of groundbreaking messenger-RNA vaccines coming to market in less than a year a pace that beat expectations.
One of them, Massachusetts-based Moderna, worked alongside National Institutes of Health scientists and received other federal assistance for research and development. Pfizer took a more independent approach with its German partner, BioNTech, but welcomed pre-purchases of its doses from the Trump administration.
The Biden administration took over the vaccine rollout in January and received kudos from some quarters for extending federal aid to states that requested it to accelerate their rollouts, instead of leaving governors to their own devices.
House Democrats who received the most donations from the pharmaceutical industry are declining to support a push to release the patents on COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries, even as Pfizer reports soaring revenue from its vaccine.
Pfizer on Tuesday reported $3.46 billion in first-quarter vaccine sales in all but three countries. BioNTech, which which it splits vaccine costs and profit, will report the remaining revenue on May 10.
The company almost doubled its sales projections for the COVID-19 vaccine this year, from $15 billion to roughly $26 billion, citing strong demand for its vaccine.
Meanwhile, the nine House Democrats among Congress s top 25 recipients of donations from pharmaceutical industry PACs have all declined to sign on to a letter urging the Biden administration to waive intellectual property rights for the vaccine to let developing countries produce their own supply, according to the Huffington Post.
Biden throws support behind waiving intellectual property protections for Covid vaccines to allow hard-hit countries like India and South Africa to make copycat shots
The Biden administration said on Wednesday it supports waiving intellectual property protections for vaccine makers like Pfizer and Moderna
Without waiving these patent rights, countries like South African and India cannot manufacture the shots The Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines, said US Trade Representative Katherine Tai in a statement
The World Trade Organization has urged counties to waive patent protection
By Press Association 2021
A healthcare worker injects a man with a dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine in Puerto Rico
Moderna and vaccine promoter Gavi have announced a deal by which the pharmaceutical company will provide up to 500 million doses for the UN-backed Covax programme by the end of 2022.
The advance purchase agreement comes just days after the World Health Organisation (WHO), after weeks of delays, announced emergency approval for the Moderna vaccine that will pave the way for its rollout in Covax.
The UN-backed programme aims to get coronavirus vaccines to needy people in low and middle-income countries.
However, deliveries are not set to begin until the fourth quarter of this year, and the vast majority of the doses in the deal – 466 million – are planned for next year, with the remaining 34 million expected this year.