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GENEVA – Global players have been gathering online since Monday to brainstorm ways to rapidly boost vaccine production and combat a still-virulent coronavirus that has hampered the world for 14 months.
Giving momentum to the meeting is a warning from the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) that the pandemic will not end unless poor countries can keep up with accelerated mass vaccination campaigns across nations. rich.
Gathered online Monday and Tuesday will be partners in the COVAX vaccine distribution initiative, led by the GAVI vaccine alliance and supported by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations research arm, as well as WHO.
Government delegates, scientists and representatives of pharmaceutical giants will also participate, as well as small drug manufacturers from developing countries.
The aim is to “shed light on the gaps we currently have in the supply chain, of reagents, of raw materials, of products that are needed to make vaccines,” WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said Friday in a Press conference.
The pharmaceutical industry is aiming to produce 10 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine this year, which is double the 2019 manufacturing capacity for all types of vaccines.
Making these punches requires not only an unprecedented amount of ingredients, but also items such as glass for the vials and plastic for their caps, at a time when global supply chains have been disrupted by the pandemic, Swaminathan said.
“So the summit is really focusing on that area upstream, the gaps, how they can be filled and solutions found.”
Such interventions “can make a difference in the short term” even as WHO and others are already considering the long-term course of the pandemic, he added.
Putting rivalries aside
Pressure from governments and public opinion has helped push pharmaceutical groups, which generally compete for a competitive advantage, into deals to produce more doses of vaccines.
With its own vaccine development lagging, Sanofi of France will produce the Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson versions.
Merck will also produce the J&J injections, Switzerland’s Novartis will produce doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Curevac vaccines, while Germany’s Bayer is also ready to help Curevac.
These agreements are “very welcome,” Swaminathan said.
“We would like to see more of this happening and in more parts of the world.
“We need to explore the filling and finishing capacity in Asia, Africa and Latin America and use those facilities to increase supply.”
Marie-Paule Kieny, research director at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, noted that “there are many generic drug manufacturers who have a high track record … and good manufacturing practices, which could also help in this process.” .
But the cooperation raises challenges on how to share or license the valuable intellectual property that pharmaceutical companies have invested heavily to create, albeit often with significant state aid, so that they can at least recoup their costs.
Despite pressure from aid groups and the WHO, a proposal by India and South Africa at the World Trade Organization to temporarily suspend vaccine patents appears to be stalled.
Unequal race
Efforts to boost vaccine production should help disadvantaged nations, which lack the cash to buy directly from drug companies, immunize their people.
The ambitious COVAX initiative aims to supply vaccines to dozens of countries in the first 100 days of 2021.
It hopes to distribute enough doses, about 1.3 billion, to vaccinate up to 27 percent of the population in the 92 poorest participating economies by the end of the year.
But the first COVAX injections have only been distributed in recent days, with around 20 million reaching 20 different countries. Meanwhile, rich nations have been vaccinating since December.
With more than 14 million additional doses to be delivered next week, “this is encouraging progress,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“But the dose volume that is delivered through COVAX is still relatively small.”
COVAX will supply enough vaccines for only 2-3 percent of the population of recipient countries in June, “even as other countries move rapidly towards vaccinating their entire population in the coming months,” he added. – AFP
