WTO Exempts The New Crown Vaccine Patent Negotiation To Be Deadlocked, How To Solve The Global Vaccine Accessibility Problem?

With the spread of delta variant strains in the world, the issue of vaccine access and fairness has aroused heated discussion again. According to the World Health Organization, more than 3.5 billion doses of vaccines have been distributed worldwide, but more than 75% of them have been distributed to only 10 countries.

On July 21, in a high-level dialogue between the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Health Organization (who), who director general Tan Desai pointed out that there was still an alarming imbalance in global vaccine distribution, leading to the emergence of a "two track system" of the new coronavirus pandemic: rich countries are opening up, while poor countries are blocking.

"We must spare no effort to increase the supply of vaccines in low-income countries," he stressed. We need to increase vaccine production substantially. This can be achieved by removing barriers to the expansion of manufacturing, such as technology transfer, deregulation of the supply chain and exemption of intellectual property rights. With so many lives at stake, profits and patents must come second. "

He called on vaccine donors and related industries to promote voluntary, transparent and non exclusive patent licensing, technology and data transfer through the covid-19 technology access pool (c-tap).

At the same time, the discussion on temporary exemption of vaccine patent in WTO is still going on. In an exclusive reply to the 21st century economic reporter, who communication officer Fernando Puchol said that at the trips Council meeting on July 20, WTO members agreed to continue to consider proposals related to the agreement on trade related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS) in response to the new coronavirus pandemic.

According to the reporter, there are still differences within the trips Council. While the missions remain committed to the common goal of timely and safe access to high-quality, safe, effective and affordable vaccines and medicines for all, there are differences on how to address the fundamental issue of shortages and unfair access to vaccines and other new coronavirus related products in an appropriate and most effective manner.

As the consideration of the revised exemption request cannot be completed, the trips Council will continue its discussions, including through group consultations and informal open-ended meetings, and report to the General Council in accordance with Article 9, Article 3, of the Marrakesh Agreement. The trips Council also agreed to continue to consider other relevant proposals made by members in the same way.

The WTO director general, okonjo ivira, recently acknowledged that the current text-based negotiations on the trips exemption proposal were "slow" and that members were trying to reconcile different views and methods“ We are currently working on how to help members bridge their differences and advance these negotiations. "

So why is it so difficult to negotiate a temporary exemption for vaccine patents? What is the core issue of vaccine distribution? The reporter of 21st century economic news interviewed Shao Yiming, a researcher of China CDC, a member of the expert group of vaccine research and development team of key scientific research group, and consultant of vaccine research and Development Committee of who.

21st century: in the face of the new coronavirus pandemic, some national leaders and executives of multinational pharmaceutical companies are opposed to the temporary exemption of vaccine patents. Why is this?

Shao Yiming: patent protection of drugs is a double-edged sword. It not only encourages the research and development of new drugs, but also limits the accessibility of patented drugs. Some developed countries and all multinational pharmaceutical companies are against the exemption of the new crown vaccine patent, because they think it will hinder the development of new drugs and harm the commercial interests of pharmaceutical enterprises. The contradiction between drug patent protection and drug accessibility is essentially the contradiction between commercial interests and health rights and interests. The governments of developed countries have enough resources to buy drugs from large pharmaceutical enterprises to supply their citizens, and large pharmaceutical enterprises will also use their powerful influence to lobby the government to ensure the patent monopoly of their own drugs.

However, unlike other commodities, drugs are related to human health, and directly related to life and death in the epidemic of infectious diseases. It needs the cooperation of developed countries, developing countries, large pharmaceutical enterprises and human society to do everything possible to improve the accessibility of drugs, especially those in developing countries that cannot be solved by themselves. In the global drug supply chain, the United States and Europe are the "leaders" in drug research and development, India is the world's largest producer of generic drugs, and China is the world's largest producer of API. However, in the field of vaccines, the United States, Europe and China basically keep abreast of each other. Among the 145 new coronal vaccines approved for marketing and emergency use, China accounts for 7. Of the 2 billion doses of new coronal vaccines that have been vaccinated in the world, China's vaccines account for more than 1 billion. Therefore, the European and American countries and China should carry out cooperation in various aspects, promote the expansion of vaccine and pharmaceutical enterprises, and meet the demand of new coronavirus in developing countries. Only by inoculating new coronal vaccine and establishing global population immune barrier, can we finally overcome the global pandemic of new coronavirus.

21st century: what are the reasons why exemption of patents cannot solve the problem of vaccine accessibility?

Shao Yiming: the governments of South Africa and India first put forward the proposal of temporarily exempting the patent of new crown vaccine. The governments of China and the United States agreed successively, but many big countries in Europe objected. At present, the proposal has entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) for negotiation. Since the decision-making mechanism of WTO is consensus, it is difficult to predict whether and when it can be negotiated. Since the 1990s, the WTO consultation on drug accessibility and intellectual property protection was carried out, and it was not until 2005 that the revised protocol on trips was reached, which allows for the compulsory imitation of drugs with unexpired patents and parallel export to other countries in order to protect the life and health of the public in public health emergencies.

21st century: what is the impact of the revised trips protocol you just mentioned on global drug accessibility?

Shao Yiming: there has always been a dispute between patent protection and public health all over the world, which reflects the conflict between the standards for drug patent protection established by TRIPS Agreement and the drug access of developing countries under the public health crisis. Through years of unremitting efforts, including the Doha Declaration, the General Council resolution, and finally the trips revised protocol, the international community finally made the first choice in favor of public health interests between the protection of the right to life and health and the intellectual property rights of drugs. The international treaty stipulates that Member States have the right to approve the compulsory license of patented drugs in the event of public health crisis. It also defines the scope of compulsory license and the definition of national emergency or other emergency situations, which lays a legal foundation for all countries to implement the compulsory license of patented drugs.

21st century: what role do developing countries play in implementing the revised protocol to trips?

Shao Yiming: in the pandemic of major infectious diseases, many developing countries are facing a serious shortage of specific therapeutic drugs and preventive vaccines, resulting in a severe public health crisis. The global AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis pandemic once caused huge loss of life and economic burden. Although the progress of science has made AIDS specific drugs appear in the 1990s, because of the high prices, only patients in developed countries can use them, and more than 20 million AIDS patients in developing countries cannot obtain them for a long time. This directly leads to the per capita life expectancy in some African countries, and the death caused by AIDS has dropped by more than ten to several decades! This is also the driving force and reason for the international community, especially the developing countries and international organizations such as the World Health Organization (who) and the United Nations Programme on HIV / AIDS (AIDS), to continuously promote and finally reach an amendment to the trips protocol.

Some developing countries, such as Brazil, South Africa and Thailand, have implemented compulsory drug licensing in the face of major infectious diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which has solved the public health crisis caused by AIDS and other major diseases. In fact, developed countries, including the United States and Canada, have implemented or threatened to implement compulsory licensing of patented drugs when they encounter public health threats. At the beginning of this century, who and AIDS cooperated with developing countries, and with the help of the revised trips protocol, promoted the United Nations to establish a global fund for the prevention and control of major infectious diseases, which eventually solved the problem of drug access to AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in developing countries, saved a large number of lives and maintained global public health.

In the current global pandemic of new coronal pneumonia, the progress of science has led to the rapid emergence of a large number of new coronal vaccines. However, the history has a striking similarity, and developing countries are facing the same challenge as when they could not use AIDS drugs - they could not use the new crown vaccine! When more than half of the people in developed countries have been vaccinated with the new crown vaccine, only 1% - 2% of the people in Africa have been vaccinated with the new crown vaccine. China must learn from the blood of more than 30 million deaths caused by AIDS. We must not spend more than 10 years arguing about which drug patent is better than the value of life. We should solve the problem of global accessibility of vaccines at the beginning of the success of the new vaccine.

21st century: what are the current solutions to the problem of vaccine access?

Shao Yiming: I would like to put forward a concept or model - "a + X", or "t + X", which is the consensus reached by the international community in the past, and the trips amendment protocol. At the critical moment of the new pneumonia pandemic, we should not spend a lot of time discussing the issue of vaccine patent exemption, because under the existing WTO consensus decision-making mechanism, it is impossible to obtain results in a short time. The international community should solve the problem of global accessibility of the new coronal vaccine under the principle of "trips revised protocol", that is, in the public health crisis, the maintenance of life is higher than the maintenance of drug patents.

Because of the high technical threshold of the new vaccine, it is far from enough to exempt the patent of the vaccine. It is necessary to solve a lot of technical bottleneck problems such as the production process, technical know-how and technical personnel of all kinds of vaccines before it can be produced. In the production engineering, it is also necessary to ensure the integrity and sustainability of the whole supply chain of raw materials, excipients, adjuvants and packaging materials for vaccine production. These factors are combined to form the required "X", which is no less important than "a" or "t". Only through the global cooperation among governments, public institutions, private enterprises, society and international organizations, including both developed and developing countries, can we obtain all the "a" or "t + X", which is the only guarantee for the production of tens of billions of doses of new coronavaccine in a short period of time.

The recently concluded G7 conference announced the donation of 1 billion doses of new crown vaccine in the coming year. It's good, but it's not enough. Because a year is too late for tens to millions of infected people and thousands of people who die every day. One billion doses of vaccine are too few for the 7.8 billion people on earth who need at least two injections per person on average. Scientific knowledge and experience in epidemic prevention tell us that only when 70% - 80% of the global population is vaccinated with the new coronavirus, can the population immune barrier against the new coronavirus be established. Therefore, human beings need to give up the political line and attack each other immediately. Only by truly uniting with the outside world and mobilizing all available forces, including the sincere cooperation of vaccine enterprises, can the accessibility and fairness of the new coronavirus be realized globally as soon as possible, and human beings can finally defeat their real enemy, the new coronavirus.