How Our Patent System Exacerbates Global Vaccine Inequity
Credit: Manatee County Government via Flickr
Even as life begins to return to normal, and as cases of COVID-19 slow nationwide, the pandemic is not over. Global vaccine inequity continues to persist, news outlets like Health Affairs and NBC have blamed vaccine inequity for the spread of the Omicron variant. However, despite this, COVID-19 vaccine producers have pushed back against waiving their patents, meaning they have effectively refused to give their information to developing countries. High-income nations should adopt a new patent system that makes this vaccine information public, promoting crucial information dispersal between nations.
These producers cite manufacturing issues, arguing that developing countries wouldn’t have the infrastructure to make new COVID-19 vaccines even if they had the information to do so. Companies worry about critical resources being diverted away from their own manufacturing sites into new, less effective manufacturing sites. Additionally, despite pressure to use compulsory licenses, as laid out by the World Trade Organization’s Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, developing countries have not been able to waive patent rights. Compulsory licensing demands that patent holders relinquish their information to another country if they believe they are experiencing a national emergency. This enables governments to supply their citizens with generic versions of patented treatments either through domestic production or imports. However, despite approval by the U.S. government, neither of these measures have been taken as manufacturers like Pfizer and Moderna have resisted. There are, however, measures that the government could take, in conjunction with vaccine producers, to encourage patent sharing while maintaining profits.
A prize patent would allow the U.S. to make patents public without manufacturer approval. As described by Bernie Sanders, a prize patent means that “rather than rewarding drug companies with a lengthy patent for creating new drugs, the government could reward them with prize money.” This means that the government buys the patent themselves, and uses it how they want. Although prize patents are typically given out before the drug is produced, the government could still pay Pfizer, Moderna, and other COVID-19 vaccine manufactures for their current patents and become the new owner. Such a move would give the U.S. government the freedom to waive the patent rights, and freely distribute the information to developing countries that want to produce their own vaccines.
A prize patent system would take away the profit incentive for private vaccine manufacturers to withhold vaccine access. In 2021, the Peoples Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of organizations and officials working to vaccinate the world against COVID-19, reported that Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna made 34 billion dollars in pre-tax profits on the vaccine. Almost all this money was from selling vaccine doses to wealthy countries. While more than 50 percent of people in most European and North American countries have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, almost no country in Africa has met this threshold. A prize patent system is one step to remedy this problem; with a public vaccine, private companies would no longer be able to control vaccine distribution. With less incentive for profit, a public vaccine would mean that low-income countries have access to the patent. Already, a campaign to waive IP rights has been backed by almost 100 countries, with the underpinning idea that every country should be able to manufacture their own vaccines.
A prize patent system wouldn’t necessarily mean that the U.S. would receive nothing from other countries; the government could sell the patent at an affordable price, along with the raw materials needed to create the drugs. The need for this is clear; while the U.S. boasts a vaccination rate of 66 percent, multiple countries in Africa, including Madagascar and Cameroon, both have vaccination rates below 5 percent. Other low income countries also sit far below the U.S. rate, including Afghanistan at 12 percent and Guatemala at 37 percent. The risks associated with so many countries being largely unvaccinated are high, as new variants are more likely to spawn and spread when a population is unprotected. These new diseases can spread overseas and affect people globally, potentially creating more shutdowns and causing needless deaths.
Low-income countries cannot afford the prices that private drug producers are charging, but they often don’t have the resources to produce drugs on their own, either. Already, low-income countries are reportedly paying higher prices for each dose than the EU and U.S. Additionally, they have fewer resources to devote to research and development. As a result, drug companies argue that manufacturers in low-income countries wouldn’t have the raw materials to start producing drugs until long after they had the patent information. This provides a common argument against waiving COVID-19 vaccine rights. However, with financial and material support from places like the World Trade Organization and high-income countries, low income countries would receive the support they need.
Even as the pandemic begins to wind-down for Americans, especially young Americans, only 11 percent of people in low-income countries have received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine as of March. A prize patent system could begin to make a change to this vaccine inequity. Buying up patents and making them public would ensure that private vaccine producers could no longer prioritize selling vaccines to wealthy countries above others. Instead, low income countries could develop vaccines for themselves. Additional policy changes, like lowering the price of additional doses produced in the U.S. and EU, could also make vaccine equity more possible. Vaccine inequity has a solution. There is no excuse for high-income nations not to act upon it.