"Anne Pritchett, senior vice president with the industry group PhRMA, said that lifting patent waivers for COVID vaccines could backfire in the next global health crisis.
"We don’t want to be deterring innovation by saying to companies, ‘There’s no incentive for you to invest in that, because we’re just going to take your IP and give it away,'” she said.
Countries in the EU, plus Switzerland and the U.K., support that view."
Peter Walker , The Guardian; Nursing unions around world call for UN action on Covid vaccine patents
"Nursing unions in 28 countries have filed a formal appeal with the United Nations over the refusal of the UK, EU and others to temporarily waive patents for Covid vaccines, saying this has cost huge numbers of lives in developing nations.
The letter, sent on Monday on behalf of unions representing more than 2.5 million healthcare workers, said staff have witnessed at first hand the “staggering numbers of deaths and the immense suffering caused by political inaction”.
The refusal of some countries to budge on rules about intellectual property rights for vaccines had contributed to a “vaccine apartheid” in which richer nations had secured at least 7bn doses, while lower-income nations had about 300m, it argued."
Lesley Wroughton, The Washington Post ; Frustrated by vaccine inequity, a South African lab rushes to replicate Moderna’s shot
"At the World Trade Organization (WTO), trade ministers had been scheduled to begin meetings Tuesday over a contentious proposal by South Africa and India to temporarily waive intellectual property rights on coronavirus vaccines and therapies or find a way to allow developing countries to access the technologies. The meeting has been postponed because of the omicron variant. No new date has been set...
African countries have historically depended on Western donors and United Nations-backed programs such as the vaccine alliance known as Gavi, a partnership of donors and pharmaceutical companies that buys vaccines at lower prices and makes them available to countries that need them. Covax, a vaccine marketplace that was meant to secure coronavirus inoculations for developing countries, has struggled to access enough supplies during the pandemic...
Moderna has said it will not prosecute those found to be infringing on its covid-related patents during the pandemic, which amounts to an informal waiver, said Marie-Paule Kieny, a French virologist who chairs the U.N.-backed Medicine Patent Pool, which is part of the WHO’s efforts in Africa.
The concern with a waiver, Kieny said, is what happens once the pandemic ends. Any broader waiver agreed on at the WTO talks would likely have a time limit, she said, without a commitment from the drugmakers to enter into licensing agreements.
She said companies should negotiate now with drugmakers such as Moderna to reach formal licensing agreements before the pandemic is over."
