PARIS (AP) – In an industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of the largest city in Bangladesh, there is a factory with shiny new equipment imported from Germany, its immaculate corridors lined with hermetically sealed rooms. It is operating at just a quarter of its capacity.
It is one of three factories that the Associated Press has found on three continents, whose owners say they could start producing hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccines in a short time if they had the designs and the technical knowledge. But that knowledge belongs to the big pharmaceutical companies that produced the first three vaccines authorized by countries like Britain, the European Union and the USA – Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. The factories are still waiting for answers.
Across Africa and Southeast Asia, governments and aid groups, as well as the World Health Organization, are asking pharmaceutical companies to share their patent information more widely to address a growing global deficiency in a pandemic that has already claimed more than 2.5 million lives. Pharmaceutical companies that have drawn taxpayer money from the United States or Europe to develop vaccines at an unprecedented rate say they are negotiating exclusive licensing contracts and agreements with producers on a case-by-case basis because they need to protect their intellectual property and ensure security.
Critics say this fragmented approach is too slow in a time of urgent need to stop the virus before it turns into even more deadly forms. WHO asked vaccine manufacturers to share their know-how to “dramatically increase the global supply”.
“If this can be done, then immediately at night all continents will have dozens of companies that will be able to produce these vaccines,” said Abdul Muktadir, whose Incepta factory in Bangladesh already makes vaccines against hepatitis, flu, meningitis, rabies, tetanus. and measles.
Worldwide, the supply of vaccines against coronavirus is far below demand and the limited quantity available is going to rich countries. Nearly 80% of vaccines have so far been administered in only 10 countries, according to the WHO. More than 210 countries and territories with 2.5 billion people had not received a single shot until last week.
The agreement-by-agreement approach also means that some poorer countries end up paying more for the same vaccine than wealthier countries. South Africa, Mexico, Brazil and Uganda pay different amounts per dose for the AstraZeneca vaccine – and more than governments in the European Union, according to studies and documents available to the public. AstraZeneca said the price of the vaccine will be different depending on local production costs and how much countries order.
“What we see today is a stampede, a survival of the most appropriate approach, where those with the deepest pockets, with the sharpest elbows are grabbing what’s there and letting others die,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS.
In South Africa, home to the most worrying COVID-19 variant in the world, the Biovac factory said for weeks that it is in negotiations with an unidentified manufacturer, without a contract to present it. And in Denmark, the Bavarian Nordic factory has spare capacity and the capacity to make more than 200 million doses, but it is also waiting for word from the producer of a licensed coronavirus vaccine.
Governments and health experts offer two potential solutions to vaccine shortages: One, supported by WHO, is a patent pool modeled after a platform created for HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis treatments for voluntary sharing of technology, intellectual property and Dice. But no company has offered to share its data.
The other, a proposal to suspend intellectual property rights during the pandemic, was blocked in the World Trade Organization by the United States and Europe, which houses the companies responsible for creating the coronavirus vaccines. This initiative is supported by at least 119 countries and the African Union, but it is vehemently contested by vaccine manufacturers.
Pharmaceutical companies say that, instead of lifting IP restrictions, rich countries should simply give more vaccines to the poorest countries through COVAX, the public-private initiative that WHO helped create for a more equitable distribution of vaccines . The organization and its partners delivered their first doses last week in very limited quantities.
But rich countries are not willing to give up what they have. Ursula Von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, used the phrase “global common good” to describe vaccines, but the European Union imposed vaccine export controls, giving countries the power to prevent vaccines from leaving.
What we see today is a stampede, a survival of the most appropriate approach, where those with the deepest pockets, with the sharpest elbows are grabbing what’s there and letting others die.
–Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS
On her first day as director-general of the WTO, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of Nigeria said the time had come to shift attention to the vaccination needs of the world’s poor.
“We must focus on working with companies to open and license more viable manufacturing sites now in emerging markets and developing countries,” she told members of the organization. “This should happen soon so that we can save lives.”
The longstanding model in the pharmaceutical industry is that companies pour huge amounts of money and research in exchange for the right to reap the profits from their medicines and vaccines. Last May, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla described the idea of sharing IP rights widely as “absurd” and even “dangerous”.
Thomas Cueni, director general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Products Manufacturers, considered the idea of suspending patent protections “a very bad sign for the future. You signal that if there is a pandemic, your patents are worthless”.
Proponents of vaccine-sharing schemes argue that, unlike most drugs, taxpayers have paid billions to develop vaccines that could help end the world’s greatest public health emergency in memory.
“People are literally dying because we cannot reach an agreement on intellectual property rights,” said Mustaqeem De Gama, a South African diplomat involved in WTO discussions.
Paul Fehlner, chief legal officer at the biotechnology company Axcella and an advocate for the WHO patent pool board, said governments that poured billions of dollars into vaccine and treatment development should have demanded more from the companies they funded from the start.
“One condition for accepting taxpayer money is not to treat them as naive,” he said.
Last month, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading pandemic specialist in the United States, said that all options must be available, including improving production capacity in the developing world and working with pharmaceuticals to relax his patents.
“Rich countries, including ourselves, have a moral responsibility when there is a global outbreak like this,” said Fauci. “We need to vaccinate the whole world, not just our country.”
It is difficult to know exactly how much more vaccine could be produced worldwide if restrictions on intellectual property were lifted. But Suhaib Siddiqi, former chemistry director at Moderna, said that with the design and technical consultancy, a modern factory should be able to start producing vaccines in a maximum of three to four months.
“In my opinion, the vaccine belongs to the public,” said Siddiqi. “Any company with experience in synthesizing molecules should be able to do that.”
Back in Bangladesh, the Incepta factory tried to get what it needed to manufacture more vaccines in two ways: by offering its production lines to Moderna and by contacting a WHO partner. Moderna did not respond to requests for comment on the Bangladesh plant, but its CEO, Stéphane Bancel, told European lawmakers that the company’s engineers were fully occupied with expanding production in Europe.
“Doing more technology transfer now can really put production and increased production in 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 share it and is willing to pay a fair price.
“Nobody should give up their property for anything,” he said. “A vaccine could be made available to people – effective, high-quality vaccines.”
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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