The US has backed a proposal presented to the World Trade Organization to waive patent protections for COVID-19 vaccines.
The temporary waiver is supported by many developing nations but is currently being blocked by the EU, UK, Switzerland, Japan, Norway, Canada, Brazil and Australia. It would allow countries to produce generic versions of the vaccines at a cheaper price, potentially speeding up manufacturing.
While Australia is likely to follow suit in its support, experts warn we won’t see an immediate impact on worldwide vaccination rates.
Chair of Intellectual Property at Melbourne University Professor Andrew Christie told Crikey patent rights aren’t the issue: supplies and manufacturing are.
“Whilst it reflects an aspiration that we all have that people can get these vaccines more easily more readily more quickly, I think patent rights is actually missing the issue,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s going to really make any significant difference whatsoever.”
India’s biggest vaccine maker, the Serum Institute of India, is facing shortages of raw materials needed to manufacture the AstraZeneca and Covovax vaccines, while around the world — including in Australia — manufacturing facilities are struggling to meet production targets.
“The worst possible outcome would be that people take their eye off the ball about the real issues,” Christie said — securing supplies, ramping up production and making vaccines readily available to the poorest countries in the world.
He also warned the waiver could disincentivise the private sector from developing future vaccines.
Is this all for optics?
Director of the Menzies Centre for Health Governance at ANU Sharon Friel told Crikey geopolitics was always at play when it came to vaccines, with Australia likely to support its friends and allies.
Christie said he thinks Australia is likely to follow the US lead, but “for political and optical reasons rather than for really substantive human benefit reasons”.
Given Australia doesn’t have a vaccine candidate, we don’t benefit from blocking the waiver — but could potentially manufacture drugs more cheaply with it, especially if an mRNA vaccine manufacturing facility is built.
But pharmaceutical companies don’t just hand out vaccine recipes because intellectual property rights are lifted: companies would have to reverse-engineer production to figure out how it is made.
Christie said the best option for Australia and for many countries would be for big pharma to provide royalty-free licences to manufacture the vaccine and ensure rich countries pay to subsidise supply in poorer countries.
“I don’t think it’s the case that abolition of patents is the magic bullet here,” he said.
“While Australia is likely to follow suit in its support,” – of course we will!!! Initially we rejected the proposal now because our ‘mate’ has changed his mind we will follow blindly – just like we did in to Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and god knows where else
Yes, we’re not exactly brave pioneers these days!
“He also warned the waiver could disincentivise the private sector from developing future vaccines.”
What? The person who said this is an academic and an expert in IP? I’m confused, I thought we (including the academics) were convinced its ALL big pharma’s fault and a waiver was such a great idea.
Allow to produce generic versions of the vaccines at “…at a lower price…” or “…more cheaply”.
You wouldn’t write hotter or colder temperature … or would you?
“(Christie)…warned the waiver could disincentivise the private sector from developing future vaccines.” – sounds like the scientific equivalent of pay peanuts, get monkeys.
Or as Bozo the UK PM brayed, “greed and the profit motive found a vaccine in record time.”
yeah, nah notwithstanding yoooog government funding.
Its fascinating how Crikey is constantly criticizing the LNP with respect to Covid management, but yet the BBC says. …
“Australia and New Zealand have been praised for their response to the pandemic, with both countries having seen comparatively few deaths.
In a sign of how effective their lockdown measures have been, the average number of cases in both countries is similar to that in French Polynesia, a sprawling network of islands in the Pacific Ocean.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51235105
BBC – No 1 propaganda channel – not believable quickly followed by our own ABC & SBS.
Unlike the highly credentialed Alex Jones’ “InfoWars” & “Prison Planet”.
In Australia WE KNOW that Morrison said let the virus rip & go to the footy while the state premiers shut borders & organised lock downs & quarantine. LNP FAILED on very level.
Can you point me to the ‘let it rip’ quote?
Morrison and the LNP more or less abrogated pandemic control to the states and they have done most of the hard lifting. The feds, somewhat reluctantly, followed advice and did put an excellent financial aid package together. Instead of now following that up with a massive infrastructure building package to stimulate the economy, they’re yet again considering corporate tax cuts. How dozy can you get!
While all this was going on, instead of getting local manufacturers to ramp up to produce vaccines and be part of the global supply solution, they acted like we’re some 3rd world country and need others to supply us with our vaccines. Even Cuba is producing its own vaccines. Pathetic!
On top of all that, instead of organising quarantine centres in every state, they’d rather just ban citizens from returning home.
Undoubtedly the LNP could have done better but here’s the rub. Im in Victoria and we had wall to wall negative coverage of our Labour govs supposed mismanagement and at the same time had wall to wall negative coverage of the LNP national efforts. I vote labour if you are curious. But as BBC (who has no horse in this race) says, Australia has done a pretty good job of managing. Well except for our hotel quarantine. We are fortunate due to our geographic isolation but its pretty clear our various govs deserve some credit. Seems us Aussies just like to whinge, and our media outlets know that negativity and controversy sells papers.
Manufacturing our own vaccine? Well we had the Uni of Qld vaccine and we were ready to mass produce it, but it had problems. We also had large orders for other vaccines in place as a plan B. I have no idea whether if we have the necessary raw materials from our aborted effort still available and can that be used for manufacturing another vaccine, but there is a world wide shortage to the point that various people (inc Crikey) have said that offering to waive the patents is a hollow gesture due to the lack of such chemicals.
If I was going to be a bit conspiratorial Id question whether its in Australia’s interest to race to immunization. There is a lot of pent up covid cash thats sloshing around at the moment and I bet there are plenty lobby groups happy its being soaked up locally before the borders are opened and it leaves the country.
Quarantine centers in each state? We had them here in Vic and it went bad quickly. We also tried to send them to Christmas island and that was criticized as inhumane. The other problem with quarantine is the you risk infecting all the other people involved. Aircrews, ground crews, borderforce staff, hotel staff etc. One reasonable and workable solution was to enforce vaccination of returnees before they return, but sending vaccines to India just for our citizens is a bad look. Yes, quarantining could have been a lot better, but on a world standard i don’t think we did any worse than the average.
And no, I dont agree with the corporate tax cuts, not with out atleast a corresponding crack down on multinational, corporate and non corporate tax minimization/avoidance.
I agree there’s plenty of praise to go round, but rather less for the feds. I didn’t mean we had to develop our own vaccine, although again, Cuba has four undergoing trials, but plenty of countries are manufacturing under licence, why aren’t we? We’re lazily relying on other countries to do the heavy lifting, and right now that’s not working out so well. Why aren’t we part of the supply solution for the Pacific region?
As far as quarantine centres go, this really is an area where federal oversight and funding come into play. For better or worse Border Force has to be involved and for doctors, nurses and support staff, well we have an army, navy and airforce, potentially ready for any emergency, right? I would classify this as a greater ‘emergency’ then the billions, not to mention the lives lost, we probably spent on supporting the US in a utterly pointless war in the Middle East.
Good points.
Im not the first to say that we tend to follow the US into wars so as to buy favor in case we are invaded.
Nice talking with you btw.
And heres the infrastructure spend you asked for….
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/budget-2021-infrastructure-projects-get-10-billion-boost-over-the-next-decade
$10B over ten years? Not exactly a huge stimulatory package is it. How about spending $10B a year for much needed social housing right around the nation. Imagine what that would do for jobs and manufacturing. It’s not like we can’t afford it.
Well the Victorian budget is cactus, so im not sure there are mountains of cash around to spend at a national level.
MMT.
Simples.
End.Of.
I’m certainly no economist but in the LONG term our public spending needs to match public revenue. I’m not saying we are past that point, but at some point they need to be matched. Its fine to build a bridge to get to the other side of a recession but what if the other side is much much further away than we thought. How long can we spend our way out of recession.
The libs squeal like stuck pigs whenever a labor party wants to spend money, yet always seem to have a few hundred billion available when it comes to corporate tax cuts, dubious fighters/submarines and whatever else suits their fancy. At the same time they’ve closed down our car and renewable energy manufacturing capability. Read last week we’ll be the only country in the world that, not just won’t have EV buying incentives, but will actually tax you for buying one.
I agree with BM above. MMT.