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Angela Merkel has come out against the proposal made by the Biden administration suspension of intellectual property rights For Covid-19 vaccines, he said it would have “serious consequences” for vaccine production worldwide.
The German chancellor said the limiting factors in the supply of vaccines are “production capabilities and high quality standards, not patents”.
“The protection of intellectual property is a source of innovation and should continue to be so in the future,” he added.
Merkel was responding to President Joe Biden’s chief trade adviser Katherine Tai and said that although the US has a “strong belief” in IP protections, it will accept the waiver of these rules Covid-19 vaccines.
Failure to do so would allow any pharmaceutical manufacturer in the world to make “copying” vaccines without fear of being prosecuted for violating intellectual property rights.
“It’s a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures,” Tai said in a statement on Wednesday.
The U.S. would “actively participate” in working on the waiver text in the World Trade Organization negotiations, adding that such discussions will take time given the complexity of the issues involved.
Washington’s proposal has left the EU behind. In recent months the bloc has maintained its push to renounce the vaccine patent within India and South Africa as a WTO.
The US movement received an excellent response from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. He said the EU was “ready to discuss” how the proposal could deal with the current crisis in an “effective and pragmatic way”.
But he also stressed that the priority is for countries that produce vaccines to remove barriers to exports and correct supply chain disruptions.
Von der Leyen compared the EU’s view to that of some allies: “Europe is the only democratic region that exports vaccines on a large scale.” The US, a large country that produces vaccines, has kept most of its home farms for home use.
The U.S. proposal received a more positive response, according to Vladimir Putin, who said Russia, which manufactures the Sputnik V vaccine, would support the move. “The pandemic is a state of emergency. . . Certainly, Russia would accept such an approach, “the Russian president said.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said it “expects” to engage in active and constructive discussions with all parties within the WTO framework in order to reach an effective and fair agreement. “
French President Emmanuel Macron said he was open to the idea of renouncing IP rights, but “the reality is that bottlenecks today are not about price or patents.”
“You can transfer intellectual property to pharmaceutical companies in Africa, but they don’t have a platform for making mRNA vaccines,” he said.
Opposing the idea of giving up is BioNTech, a German start-up that launched its first RNA-based vaccine in the joint venture market with Pfizer. The company has said it will not alleviate current supply shortages and has warned of the dangers of opening up manufacturing to producers with no mRNA experience.
“Along with Pfizer, we are also working with a number of organizations to help vaccinate populations around the world. And we will continue to vaccinate low- and lower-income countries at a nonprofit price,” BioNTech said in a statement Thursday.
“However, patents are not a limiting factor in the production or supply of our vaccine…. The process of manufacturing RNAm is a complex process that has been developed over a decade.”
Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Modern, said that vaccine authors would expand their capacity a lot before new players make a real difference in supply.
“If you start today, you have to start hiring people. These vaccines do not fall from the sky, “Bancel told the FT US Pharma and Biotech Summit on Thursday.” There is no mRNA industry.
Matthias Gainyer, a general partner at venture capital firm MIG, one of BioNTech’s first investors, said the refusal of patents would prevent future investments in the sector.
“If the US / EU / WHO suspend patent protection, they will lose a lot in the long run, namely the willingness of private investors to invest in such companies, many years before it is clear whether their technologies will succeed or not,” he said. he said.
“This would lead to the collapse of the entire industry, the only one that has just proven that it can provide a lasting solution to this medical, economic and social crisis around the world. Without private investors, this innovative power will not exist in the future – what will we do then?”
Bristol chief executive Myers Squibb described the U.S. government’s support for the refusal as “very worrying” in an interview with the FT US Pharma and Biotech Summit on Thursday.
“Our industry is dependent on the protection of intellectual property to invest in R&D and to make the necessary investments to deal with crises like Covid,” said Giovanni Caforio. “Developments over the last 24 hours have been very worrying and disappointing.”
In addition to being important in times of the chronovirus crisis, Caforio said IP protection is “critical for some areas of high medical urgency that BMS invests in how to care for cancer.”
Additional report by Leila Abboud in Paris
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