Foreign Desk Report
GENEVA: France joined the United States on Thursday in supporting an easing of patent and other protections on COVID-19 vaccines that could help poorer countries get more doses and speed the end of the pandemic. While the backing from two countries with major drug makers is important, many obstacles remain.
The move to support waiving intellectual property protections on vaccines under World Trade Organization rules marked a dramatic shift for the United States, and drew cheers from activists, complaints from Big Pharma, and a lot of questions about what comes next.
Washington had previously lined up with many other developed nations opposed to the idea floated by India and South Africa in October.
Attention is now turning to those richer nations, notably in the European Union, and France was the first to voice its support.
“I completely favor this opening up of the intellectual property,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday on a visit to a vaccine center. But he also expressed doubt, as the pharmaceutical companies have, that the measure would be the panacea of some hope.
Even if patents are waived, he said, drugmakers in places like Africa currently are not equipped to make COVID-19 vaccines, so donations of doses should be prioritized instead.
Another key hurdle remains: Any single country could block a decision at the WTO, a Geneva-based trade body of 164 member states, to agree to a waiver.
The EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the 27-nation bloc was ready to talk about the U.S. proposal, but remained noncommittal for now.
“We are ready to discuss how the U.S. proposal for waiver on intellectual property protection for COVID vaccines could help” end the crisis, she said in a video address. “In the short run, however, we call upon all vaccine producing countries to allow exports and to avoid measures that disrupt supply chains.”
That echoed the position of the global pharmaceutical industry, which insists a faster solution would be for rich countries that have vaccine stockpiles to start sharing them with poorer ones.
The industry insists that production of coronavirus vaccines is complicated and can’t be ramped up by easing intellectual property protections. Instead, it insists that reducing bottlenecks in supply chains and a scarcity of ingredients that go into vaccines are the more pressing issues for now.
“A waiver is the simple but the wrong answer to what is a complex problem,” said the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations.
