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WASHINGTON: Richard Hatchett, the head of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), is concerned.
Their job is to ensure that future COVID-19 vaccines are shared equitably around the world, but the United States, Europe and other wealthy countries have already reserved the first doses for themselves.
Just seven months after the outbreak of the pandemic, and even before clinical trials of experimental vaccines end, some developed countries and regions (the United States, Great Britain, the European Union, Canada and Japan) have placed orders for at least 3,100 millions. dose, based on an AFP count.
US President Donald Trump paved this path in particular: His administration signed contracts guaranteeing at least 800 million doses from six manufacturers for a population of 330 million, to be delivered starting the end of the year for some of the dose.
“The United States is potentially in a situation of oversupply if all the vaccines they have invested in are successful,” Hatchett told AFP in an interview from London.
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The American said he understood that national leaders are serving their own people as a priority, but asked Washington to behave like a world leader and share its doses with other countries.
“What we need to persuade world leaders is that as a vaccine becomes available in these initially limited quantities, it must be shared globally, that it should not be the case that only a handful of countries receive all the available vaccine. . in the first half of 2021, “said Hatchett, who wants at all costs to avoid the scenario of 2009, when rich countries managed to bag the first H1N1 flu vaccines.
“It worries me,” he told AFP.
Richard Hatchett, executive director of CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness, is concerned that rich countries are trying to secure the first COVID-19 vaccines. (AFP / Brochure)
An initiative called Covax and backed by the World Health Organization, as well as CEPI and the global vaccine alliance group Gavi, aims to equitably purchase and distribute two billion doses by 2021. Ninety-two developing countries and 80 developed countries have joined, and the European Union announced on Monday (August 31) a contribution of 400 million euros.
But the United States refuses to join the effort.
“We will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said Tuesday.
ORDER OF PRIORITY?
Covax has only managed to secure 300 million doses to date from AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical group that has also signed separate partnership agreements with the United States, Europe, Russia, South Korea, China, Latin America and Brazil. Novavax, an American biotech company, says it has partnered with an Indian group to produce up to 1 billion doses of its potential vaccine in India.
CEPI’s negotiations, financed mainly by public and private donations, including the Gates Foundation, are “ongoing” with other laboratories, but no agreement has been announced, not even with the American company Moderna, in which CEPI invested very early. The several million dollars awarded to Moderna cannot match the 2.5 billion dollars subsequently invested by the US government.
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“While we have stayed in close contact with Moderna … for that small-scale early stage deal, it cannot have those kinds of commitments,” Hatchett said.
The ideal goal of the WHO is that all countries receive vaccines for 20 percent of their population, starting with the most vulnerable people regardless of their nationality, including health workers.
The ideal goal of the World Health Organization is that all countries receive vaccines for 20 percent of their population, starting with the most vulnerable people. (AFP / Fabrice COFFRINI)
Despite the competition, Covax hopes that with 172 members, the initiative will be able to negotiate good prices.
“That is one of the reasons we are asking countries to commit to the facility now so that we know on behalf of how many countries we are negotiating,” Hatchett said. “The more countries negotiate together, the higher the purchasing power and the easier the price will be.”
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But the European Union is reaching its own deals with laboratories, with 1.3 billion doses already purchased, and has not yet said whether it will use the WHO facilities.
In the long term, Hatchett says CEPI has yet to raise between $ 700 million and $ 800 million remaining of the $ 2.1 billion needed to continue vaccine research, because there is no guarantee that any of the Vaccines that are currently being developed really work. .
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