The Biden administration made headlines on 5 May when, in a sharp reversal of US policy, it indicated its agreement, in principle, with proposals at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to waive patent protection for Covid-19 vaccines.
Pharma companies and stockbrokers were not the only ones taken by surprise by the US volte-face. Other Western States where Covid-19 vaccines are produced, especially in Europe, were bumped into expressing lukewarm support for the US move. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said the EU was “ready to discuss” the proposals, while French president Emmanuel Macron said he was “absolutely in favour” of a global waiver.
Global waiver would be welcomed by developing nations
The apparent shift in Western position was warmly welcomed by developing countries and civil society. The Africa Union, for example, praised US support for the waiver as a “remarkable expression of leadership”, at a time when poor countries are struggling to get enough vaccine doses. Amnesty International’s new secretary-general, Agnès Callamard, meanwhile, said:
“Today the United States has taken a bold step for global solidarity. By supporting the waiving of intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines, the Biden Administration has put the lives of people around the world ahead of the profits of a few pharma giants and their shareholders. Other rich states – such as Australia, Brazil, the EU and UK – must now follow suit.”
An American PR stunt?
The global distribution of Covid-19 vaccines has been extremely unequal, with terrible consequences for the rights to health and to life, especially in the world’s poorest countries.
The WTO said in April that of 700 million vaccines administered around the world, only 0.2 percent had been in low-income countries. A recent surge of infections in India, the world’s second most populous country, has underlined the point.
In October last year, this situation led India and South Africa – both vaccine producers – to push proposals at the WTO to temporarily remove intellectual property protections on Covid-19 vaccines. Until President Biden’s surprise announcement, Western States had opposed those calls.
It is, however, questionable whether intellectual property waivers will make much of a dent in the unequal global distribution of vaccines. The pharmaceutical supply chain is extremely specialised and reliant on scarce raw materials. The technology infrastructure involved in manufacturing Covid-19 vaccines, especially the new generation of mRNA vaccines produced by the likes of Pfizer and Moderna, is also complex and expensive, and thus very difficult to build from scratch.
Better to remove export restrictions?
Far better, especially in the short to medium term, would be for rich Western States, where vaccines are produced, to remove export restrictions to developing countries, to stop hoarding doses, and to ensure a fairer global distribution of these life-saving drugs (as China, India and Russia have already been doing).
Once the initial shock of the US announcement had worn off, this, indeed, became the position of the European Union. The push back against the new US position was initially led by Germany, which argued that the key issue is not intellectual property rights, but rather how to increase production capacity while ensuring quality, and how to boost exports from existing producers.
A temporary waiver on patent protection would not produce a single dose of Covid-19 vaccine in the short to medium term, von der Leyen told a news conference on the sidelines of an EU summit. EU leaders might have also added that vaccine producers like Moderna have, in any case, already promised not to enforce patents during the pandemic.
The EU also warned that setting aside intellectual property rights would have a chilling effect on innovation – an important point when one considers the remarkable speed with which pharmaceutical companies have risen to the challenge of developing Covid-19 vaccines, as well as the ongoing threat of new mutations.
In a government statement, Germany also reiterated this point: “the protection of intellectual property is a source of innovation and must remain so in the future”.
Allegations of American hypocrisy
The EU then began to move onto the offensive, pointing out (as diplomatically as possible) the hypocrisy of the US government’s position. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have spent six months hoarding Covid-19 vaccines, preventing the export of vaccines and vaccine ingredients, and restricting the export of crucial manufacturing technology.
Von der Leyen highlighted that the EU “is the only continental or democratic region of this world that is exporting at large scale”, as half of European-produced coronavirus vaccines are being exported to almost 90 countries, including those in the COVAX programme.
On 7 May, the EU therefore began to ramp up the pressure on the US and other states that have placed barriers to the export of vaccines, such as the UK (see graph), calling on them to follow the example of the EU and begin exporting a significant part of their production – particularly to developing countries:
“We invite all those who engage in the debate on a waiver for IP rights to join us [and] commit to be willing to export a large share of what is being produced in their region”, said von der Leyen.
Only through higher production, removing exports barriers, and sharing already-ordered vaccines, the EU argued, could UN member States fight the pandemic quickly and effectively. Von der Leyen’s message was echoed by Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, as well as – in an apparent change of heart – France.
The French minister for Europe, Clement Beaune, said the short-term impacts of a waiver on patents would be minimal. What is instead urgent, he said, is for countries such as the US and the UK to allow exporting. “The EU exports 50% of its production […] including to those countries with the greatest need”, he noted, “while the US has exported zero”.
