Ten Covid-19 vaccines could be available by the middle of next year if they get regulatory approval, but their inventors need patent protection, the head of the global pharmaceutical industry group said on Friday.
Vaccines from Pfizer and BioNtech, as well as Moderna and AstraZeneca, have shown promising results in large clinical trials, but it is not about “cutting corners,” said Thomas Cueni, director general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations ( IFPMA).
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“So far we have 3 of 3 of 3 hits. I would expect that we will see something similar with Johnson & Johnson, I would expect that we will see similar positive results with Novavax, and many others, Sanofi Pasteur, GSK are there, Merck, ”he said.
Big pharma and biotech companies have invested heavily in research and development and boosting manufacturing during the pandemic to be able to distribute vaccine doses, Cueni told a news conference in Geneva.
It would be a mistake to lift patent protection to allow for compulsory licensing and to try to manufacture vaccines that require such complex quality assurance without expert staff or quality control procedures, he said.
“Hopefully by next summer we will have probably 10 vaccines that have proven their worth. But all of them really need to be subjected to rigorous scientific scrutiny by regulators. “
At the World Trade Organization (WTO), India and South Africa have proposed allowing a temporary exemption to allow compulsory licenses for patented products during the pandemic. The United States, the European Union and Switzerland and others have rejected it, trade officials say.
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Cueni, asked about the proposal, said: “For me this questioning of IP is mainly political, but it is political which does not help because it would send very negative signals in terms of disrespect for the system that allowed the world to react so quickly. and in a very responsible way. “
Vaccine manufacturing plants often need 50 quality assurance employees to run hundreds of checks during production, he said, emphasizing that companies would not take advantage of the pandemic.
Cueni said IFPMA files showed that a compulsory license for a vaccine had never been granted and pointed to difficult technology and know-how. Almost all member companies had committed to setting “non-profit” or socially responsible pricing during the pandemic, he added.
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