Geneva: world trade organization Friday agreed to temporarily lift the patent COVID-19 Vaccines after two years of hard negotiations, but experts expressed doubts the deal would have a major impact on global vaccination inequality.
all 164 . unprecedented agreement sealed by world trade organization Members, after late-night overtime talks, will give developing countries the right to produce a COVID vaccine for five years “without the consent of the right holder”.
From October 2020, South Africa and India have called for the temporary removal of intellectual property rights to coronavirus vaccines to boost production to address the disparity in access between rich and poor countries.
But Friday’s agreement fell short of his earlier requests that the exemptions apply to all countries – and include COVID testing and treatment.
Under the terms of the new deal, WTO members have six months to decide whether to extend the measures “to cover the production and supply of COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics”.
“This is not in line with the initial request,” said Jerome Martin, co-founder of the Drug Policy Transparency Observatory, pointing to the fact that only developing countries are involved in the deal.
“We’ll have to see what it does in the area, but it’s not ambitious at all,” he told AFP.
James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, said this was “a limited and disappointing result”.
“The fact that the exception is limited to vaccines, has a five-year duration and does not address the WTO regulations on trade secrets does not specifically address expanded access to COVID-19 counter-measures,” he said in a statement. unlikely to provide.”
“There was pressure this week to reach a consensus on how to make multilateralism work, which appears to be the main rationale for making this decision.”
Max Lawson, co-chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance and head of inequality at Oxfam, chose Switzerland, Britain and the European Union to “block anything resembling a meaningful intellectual property exemption”.
“The conduct of rich countries in the WTO has been absolutely shameful,” he said.
The agreement also disappointed pharmaceutical lobby group IFPMA, which warned that “destroying” patent protections would stifle innovation.
“The biggest factor influencing vaccine shortages is not intellectual property, but trade. This has not been fully addressed by the WTO,” said IFPMA Director-General Thomas Cuney.
And while vaccine doses were scarce at the start of the pandemic, this is no longer the case.
According to the research group Airfinity, about 14 billion doses had been produced worldwide as of mid-June.
As supplies increase, some vaccine manufacturers such as the giant Serum Institute of India have stopped producing doses due to falling demand.
Yet many developing countries still lag far behind the rest of the world in vaccination rates.
While 60 percent of the world’s population has received the two vaccines, the number is less than 17 percent in Libya, eight percent in Nigeria and less than five percent in Cameroon. World Health Organization,
Pharma groups have said that the logistics involved in the distribution of vaccines in developing countries is a major obstacle to rolling out dosages.
Even India, which fought a long and hard fight for the exemption, expressed doubts about whether the final settlement deal would have an effect.
Earlier this week, Indian commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said that “I have my own sentiment, not a single factory, not even a single one, will ever come up with an agreement that we are eventually trying to negotiate and which may be approved.”
“It’s too late now,” he said in a statement.
This is the first time the World Trade Organization has temporarily withdrawn patents on vaccines, although in 2001 it established a mandatory licensing mechanism for HIV treatments.
François Pochart, a patent specialist at the August Debouzi law firm in Paris, said the new WTO agreement is “a step further” than those mandated licenses.
“Countries can make decisions on their own without making requests. The real novelty is that this exemption allows the country producing the vaccine to export to other markets, to another eligible member,” he said.
But Christos Cristo, president of Doctors Without Borders, called the deal “a catastrophic global failure”.
“Despite high political commitments and words of solidarity, it has been discouraging for us to see that wealthier countries fail to address the apparent inequalities in access to life-saving COVID-19 medical equipment for people in low- and middle-income countries. are.”
all 164 . unprecedented agreement sealed by world trade organization Members, after late-night overtime talks, will give developing countries the right to produce a COVID vaccine for five years “without the consent of the right holder”.
From October 2020, South Africa and India have called for the temporary removal of intellectual property rights to coronavirus vaccines to boost production to address the disparity in access between rich and poor countries.
But Friday’s agreement fell short of his earlier requests that the exemptions apply to all countries – and include COVID testing and treatment.
Under the terms of the new deal, WTO members have six months to decide whether to extend the measures “to cover the production and supply of COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics”.
“This is not in line with the initial request,” said Jerome Martin, co-founder of the Drug Policy Transparency Observatory, pointing to the fact that only developing countries are involved in the deal.
“We’ll have to see what it does in the area, but it’s not ambitious at all,” he told AFP.
James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, said this was “a limited and disappointing result”.
“The fact that the exception is limited to vaccines, has a five-year duration and does not address the WTO regulations on trade secrets does not specifically address expanded access to COVID-19 counter-measures,” he said in a statement. unlikely to provide.”
“There was pressure this week to reach a consensus on how to make multilateralism work, which appears to be the main rationale for making this decision.”
Max Lawson, co-chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance and head of inequality at Oxfam, chose Switzerland, Britain and the European Union to “block anything resembling a meaningful intellectual property exemption”.
“The conduct of rich countries in the WTO has been absolutely shameful,” he said.
The agreement also disappointed pharmaceutical lobby group IFPMA, which warned that “destroying” patent protections would stifle innovation.
“The biggest factor influencing vaccine shortages is not intellectual property, but trade. This has not been fully addressed by the WTO,” said IFPMA Director-General Thomas Cuney.
And while vaccine doses were scarce at the start of the pandemic, this is no longer the case.
According to the research group Airfinity, about 14 billion doses had been produced worldwide as of mid-June.
As supplies increase, some vaccine manufacturers such as the giant Serum Institute of India have stopped producing doses due to falling demand.
Yet many developing countries still lag far behind the rest of the world in vaccination rates.
While 60 percent of the world’s population has received the two vaccines, the number is less than 17 percent in Libya, eight percent in Nigeria and less than five percent in Cameroon. World Health Organization,
Pharma groups have said that the logistics involved in the distribution of vaccines in developing countries is a major obstacle to rolling out dosages.
Even India, which fought a long and hard fight for the exemption, expressed doubts about whether the final settlement deal would have an effect.
Earlier this week, Indian commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said that “I have my own sentiment, not a single factory, not even a single one, will ever come up with an agreement that we are eventually trying to negotiate and which may be approved.”
“It’s too late now,” he said in a statement.
This is the first time the World Trade Organization has temporarily withdrawn patents on vaccines, although in 2001 it established a mandatory licensing mechanism for HIV treatments.
François Pochart, a patent specialist at the August Debouzi law firm in Paris, said the new WTO agreement is “a step further” than those mandated licenses.
“Countries can make decisions on their own without making requests. The real novelty is that this exemption allows the country producing the vaccine to export to other markets, to another eligible member,” he said.
But Christos Cristo, president of Doctors Without Borders, called the deal “a catastrophic global failure”.
“Despite high political commitments and words of solidarity, it has been discouraging for us to see that wealthier countries fail to address the apparent inequalities in access to life-saving COVID-19 medical equipment for people in low- and middle-income countries. are.”