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GENEVA: The head of the World Health Organization called on Friday (March 5) for patent rights to be waived until the end of the coronavirus pandemic so that vaccine supplies can increase dramatically, saying these “times unprecedented “justify the measure.
At a press conference, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said countries with their own vaccine capacity should “begin to waive intellectual property rights” as provided for in special emergency provisions of the World Organization. of Commerce.
“These provisions are there for your use in emergencies,” Tedros said. “If now is not the time to use them, when?” He said WHO would soon meet with industry representatives to identify bottlenecks in production and discuss how to solve them.
The Associated Press found factories on three continents whose owners say they could start producing hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccines in no time if only they had the blueprints and technical know-how.
But that knowledge belongs to the big pharmaceutical companies that have produced the first three vaccines licensed by countries like Great Britain, the European Union and the United States: Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca.
All factories are still waiting for answers.
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Tedros praised AstraZeneca for sharing its COVID-19 vaccine technology with companies such as the Serum Institute of India, but said that “the main disadvantage of this approach is the lack of transparency.”
Pharmaceutical companies that took money from US or European taxpayers to develop vaccines at unprecedented speed say they are negotiating contracts and exclusive license agreements with producers on a case-by-case basis because they need to protect their intellectual property and ensure the security.
Tedros noted that while the UN-backed effort known as COVAX has delivered vaccines to more than 20 countries this week, the quantities are only enough to protect between 2% and 3% of each country’s population.
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