Geopolitical competition for COVID-19: who will get it first?

At the Geneva Institute of the Global Health Center, one director, Suerie Moon, calls companies capable of developing the vaccine “strategic ownership” equivalent to military weapons. By having the vaccine, countries will be able to strengthen alliances, political position, and prestige.

Although the vaccine has not yet been invented, transactions worth hundreds of millions or even billions of euros have already been made.

The United Kingdom (UK), for example, has signed contracts with five companies for € 190 million. dose of possible vaccines. One of them, AstraZeneca, has signed contracts with European Union (EU) countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy for 400 million euros. Doses The United States has signed multi-billion dollar contracts with various companies.

According to Moon, such a race between rich countries is “catastrophic at the international level.”

“This means that there will be very few vaccines for the rest of the world and for countries that do not have money or do not have the production capacity in their own country to obtain access to the vaccine,” he told Politico.

According to Charlie Weller, head of the vaccine program at the Wellcome Trust, in the first year after the vaccine’s invention, there won’t be enough doses to supply everyone.

“Therefore, mechanisms to divide resources equally will be absolutely necessary,” he said.

The role of the pharmaceutical industry.

Thomas Cueni, director general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), warned that the industry could find itself between two fires: governments seeking to vaccinate their countries first, and global initiatives to ensure their equitable distribution.

“We do not want to take risks, so we are fully committed to COVAX,” he said at the Chatham House event in July, referring to an international initiative to ensure the equitable distribution of the vaccine.

“But to obtain the support of COVAX, we need the solidarity of the richest countries, so that they are willing to subsidize the richest countries,” Cueni said.

Kate Elder, Senior Advisor to Doctors Without Borders on Vaccine Policy, believes that the pharmaceutical industry should not be automatically relieved of its responsibilities.

“The industry should definitely not only sign contracts with the first rich country, which has a lot of money,” he told Politico.

Elder added that the pharmaceutical industry appears to have changed its position on the pandemic, and some vaccine manufacturers promise “non-profit” vaccines.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the vaccine of the future as “a public health asset for all mankind,” and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the price of the vaccine should be available “in all corners of the world. “

French President Emmanuel Macron said similarly, saying the new vaccine should benefit everyone.

According to Elder, such messages are unprecedented.

“We have never seen so many heads of state say that (vaccines) must be a global health product, that it will be a human vaccine,” he said.

James Love, director of the non-governmental organization Knowledge Ecology International, is skeptical.

Apparently, despite the warm words, there is a lack of transparency, a lot of collusion.

“In many cases, vaccines are considered a national security problem in some countries, making transparency very difficult to achieve,” Love said.

In the UK, for example, there have been a number of contracts with pharmaceutical companies whose terms are secret. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the UK was working to make the first vaccine available worldwide. However, he emphasized that he would work to ensure that vaccines were sufficient for the UK population in the first place.

Export ban

Politico writes that it would be very easy to store a vaccine made in the UK at national level; it would be sufficient to impose export restrictions.

Europe’s ability to ban goods deemed necessary for public health was illustrated by the start of a pandemic, with Germany and France trying to maintain personal protective equipment in the country and the EU banning exports outside the bloc.

Hancock assured that the invented vaccine must be produced and distributed to everyone. But he seems to have forgotten the issue of intellectual property, which is being fiercely defended by the pharmaceutical industry, writes Politico.

J. Love has been struggling with the industry for over 25 years. He believes that if someone invents the vaccine, “they should immediately start transferring the technology to other companies that have the capacity to produce the vaccine.”

The more capacity manufacturers have, the easier it will be to produce large quantities at low cost, he said.