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PARIS (AP) – In an industrial district on the outskirts of Bangladesh’s largest city sits a factory with sparkling new equipment imported from Germany, its pristine hallways lined with tightly closed rooms. It operates at only a quarter of its capacity.
It’s one of three factories the Associated Press found on three continents whose owners say they could start producing hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccines on short notice if only they had the plans and the technical know-how. But this knowledge belongs to the big pharmaceutical companies who produced the first three vaccines licensed by countries like Britain, the European Union and the United States – Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. Factories are still waiting for answers.
Across Africa and Southeast Asia, governments and aid groups, along with the World Health Organization, are calling on pharmaceutical companies to share patent information more widely to address a global deficit gaping. in a pandemic that has already killed more than 2.5 million. Pharmaceutical companies that have taken taxpayer dollars in the United States or Europe to develop vaccines at unprecedented speed say they negotiate exclusive contracts and licensing deals with producers on a case-by-case basis because they need to protect their products. intellectual property and ensure security.
Critics say this piecemeal approach is too slow at a time when it is urgent to stop the virus before it mutates into even more deadly forms. WHO has called on vaccine manufacturers to share their know-how to “dramatically increase the global supply”.
“If this can be done, then overnight every continent will have dozens of companies capable of producing these vaccines,” said Abdul Muktadir, whose Incepta factory in Bangladesh already manufactures hepatitis vaccines, the flu, meningitis, rabies, tetanus and measles.
Around the world, the supply of coronavirus vaccines is well below demand and the limited quantity available goes to the rich countries. To date, nearly 80% of vaccines have been administered in just 10 countries, according to the WHO. More than 210 countries and territories with 2.5 billion people had not received a single injection last week.
The case-by-case approach also means that some poorer countries end up paying more for the same vaccine as richer countries. South Africa, Mexico, Brazil and Uganda all pay different amounts per dose for the AstraZeneca vaccine – and more than governments in the European Union, according to studies and publicly available documents. AstraZeneca said the price of the vaccine will differ based on local production costs and the number of orders in countries.
“What we are seeing today is a rush, a survival of the most appropriate approach, where those with the deepest pockets, with the sharpest elbows grab what is there and leave the others. die, ”said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS.
In South Africa, home to the world’s most disturbing variant of COVID-19, the Biovac plant said for weeks it was in negotiations with an anonymous manufacturer without a contract to show it. And in Denmark, the Nordic Bavarian plant has resale capacity and the capacity to manufacture more than 200 million doses, but is also awaiting word from the producer of an authorized coronavirus vaccine.
Governments and health experts offer two potential solutions to the vaccine shortage: one, backed by WHO, is a patent pool inspired by a platform created for treatments for HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis for the voluntary sharing of technology, intellectual property and data. But no company has offered to share its data.
The other, a proposal to suspend intellectual property rights during the pandemic, has been blocked at the World Trade Organization by the United States and Europe, which is home to the companies tasked with creating coronavirus vaccines. This campaign has the support of at least 119 countries and the African Union, but it is staunchly opposed by vaccine manufacturers.
Pharmaceutical companies say instead of lifting intellectual property restrictions, rich countries should just give poorer countries more vaccines by COVAX, the public-private initiative that WHO helped create for a more equitable distribution of vaccines. The organization and its partners delivered its first doses last week in very limited quantities.
But rich countries are not ready to give up what they have. Ursula Von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, used the term “global common good” to describe vaccines, but the European Union imposed export controls. on vaccines, giving countries the power to stop vaccines from leaving.
On her first day as WTO Director-General, Nigerian Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said now is the time to focus attention on the immunization needs of the world’s poor.
“We need to focus on working with businesses to open and license more viable manufacturing sites now in emerging markets and developing countries,” she told members of the organization. “It should happen soon so that we can save lives.”
The long-standing model in the pharmaceutical industry is that companies pay huge sums of money and research in return for the right to profit from their drugs and vaccines. Last May, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla called the idea of widely sharing intellectual property rights “absurd” and even “dangerous”.
Thomas Cueni, managing director of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, called the idea of lifting patent protections “a very bad signal for the future.” You point out that if you have a pandemic, your patents are worthless. ”
Proponents of sharing vaccination plans say that unlike most drugs, taxpayers have paid billions to develop vaccines that could help end the world’s biggest public health emergency in living memory.
“People are literally dying because we can’t agree on intellectual property rights,” said Mustaqeem De Gama, a South African diplomat involved in the WTO talks.
Paul Fehlner, legal director of biotech company Axcella and supporter of the WHO patent board, said governments that have invested billions of dollars in vaccine and treatment development should have demanded more from companies they financed from the start.
“A condition for taking taxpayers’ money is not to treat them like dupes,” he said.
Last month, Dr Anthony Fauci, the leading pandemic expert in the United States, said all options had to be on the table, including improving production capacity in developing countries and working with pharmaceuticals to relax their patents.
“Rich countries, including ourselves, have a moral responsibility when you have a global epidemic like this,” Fauci said. “We need to vaccinate the whole world, not just our own country.”
It is difficult to know exactly how much more vaccine could be done worldwide if intellectual property restrictions were lifted. But Suhaib Siddiqi, former director of chemistry at Moderna, said that with the blueprint and technical guidance, a modern factory should be able to start vaccine production in no more than three to four months.
“In my opinion, the vaccine belongs to the public,” Siddiqi said. “Any company that has experience in synthesizing molecules should be able to do so.”
Back in Bangladesh, the Incepta factory tried to get what it needed to make more vaccines in two ways, by offering its production lines to Moderna and contacting a WHO partner. Moderna did not respond to requests for comment on the Bangladesh plant, but its CEO, Stéphane Bancel, told EU lawmakers that the company’s engineers are fully engaged in expanding production in Europe.
“Doing more technology transfer now could actually put production and increased production for the coming months at great risk,” he said. “We are very open to doing this in the future once our current sites are up and running.”
Muktadir said he fully appreciates the extraordinary scientific achievement involved in creating vaccines this year, wants the rest of the world to be able to participate and is ready to pay a fair price.
“No one should give up their property for nothing,” he said. “A vaccine could be made available to people – effective, high-quality vaccines.”
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Maria Cheng reported from Toronto. Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, Al-Emrun Garjon in Dhaka, Bangladesh and Andrew Meldrum in Johannesburg, South Africa contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s pandemic coverage on:
https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine
https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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