The US has secured 400 mn doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, enough for 200 mn people, and is close to arranging 200 mn additional doses by summer, with options to buy up to 500 mn more. It has advance purchase agreements for more than 1 bn doses from four other companies whose inoculations do not yet have U.S. regulatory approval.
Chennai: When members of the European Parliament sat down this month to read the first publicly available contract for purchasing coronavirus vaccines, they noticed something missing. Actually, a lot missing. The price per dose? Redacted. The rollout schedule? Redacted. The amount of money being paid up front? Redacted. And that contract, between the German pharmaceutical company CureVac and the European Union, is considered one of the world’s most transparent.
Governments have poured billions of dollars into helping drug companies develop vaccines and are spending billions more to buy doses. But the details of those deals largely remain secret, with governments and public health organisations acquiescing to drug company demands for secrecy. Just weeks into the vaccination campaign, that secrecy is already making accountability difficult. The drug companies Pfizer and AstraZeneca recently announced that they would miss their European delivery targets, causing widespread concern as dangerous virus variants spread. But the terms of their contracts remain closely guarded secrets, making it difficult to question company or government officials about either blame or recourse. Available documents, however, suggest that drug companies demanded and received flexible delivery schedules, patent protection and immunity from liability if anything goes wrong. In some instances, countries are prohibited from donating or reselling doses, a ban that could hamper efforts to get vaccines to poor countries.
Governments are cutting at least three types of vaccine deals: Some are buying directly from pharmaceutical companies. Others are buying through regional bodies like the European Union or the African Union. Many will turn to the non-profit Covax program, an alliance of more than 190 countries, which is buying from the drug makers with an eye toward making vaccines available worldwide, especially to poor countries free or at reduced cost. Some governments have signed deals with manufacturers and Covax alike.
The US has secured 400 mn doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, enough for 200 mn people, and is close to arranging 200 mn additional doses by summer, with options to buy up to 500 mn more. It has advance purchase agreements for more than 1 bn doses from four other companies whose inoculations do not yet have U.S. regulatory approval.
The European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch negotiating on behalf of its 27 member states, has nearly 2.3 billion doses under contract and is negotiating for about 300 mn more, according to data collected by UNICEF and Airfinity, a science analytics company. Covax says it has agreements for just over 2 billion vaccine doses although it, too, is keeping its contracts secret. Only about a dozen of the 92 countries that qualify for vaccine subsidies under the alliance have managed to secure separate deals with individual companies, for a combined 500 mn doses. Despite the tremendous taxpayer investments, typically the drug companies fully own the patents. That means that companies can decide how and where the vaccines get manufactured and how much they cost. As the CureVac contract explains it, the company “shall be entitled to exclusively exploit any such” property rights.
This has been a matter of contention for months. A coalition of countries, led by India and South Africa, have petitioned the World Trade Organization to waive intellectual property rights so generic drug makers can begin producing the vaccines. The World Health Organization has endorsed the idea, but it is all but doomed by opposition from the United States and Europe, whose drug makers say patents, and the profits that flow from them, are the lifeblood of innovation. “Governments are creating artificial scarcity,” said Zain Rizvi of the watchdog group Public Citizen. “When the public funds knowledge that is required to end a pandemic, it shouldn’t be kept a secret.”
M Apuzzo and S Gebrekidan are reporters for NYT©2020
The New York Times
Governments have poured billions of dollars into helping drug companies develop vaccines and are spending billions more to buy doses. But the details of those deals largely remain secret, with governments and public health organisations acquiescing to drug company demands for secrecy. Just weeks into the vaccination campaign, that secrecy is already making accountability difficult. The drug companies Pfizer and AstraZeneca recently announced that they would miss their European delivery targets, causing widespread concern as dangerous virus variants spread. But the terms of their contracts remain closely guarded secrets, making it difficult to question company or government officials about either blame or recourse. Available documents, however, suggest that drug companies demanded and received flexible delivery schedules, patent protection and immunity from liability if anything goes wrong. In some instances, countries are prohibited from donating or reselling doses, a ban that could hamper efforts to get vaccines to poor countries.
Governments are cutting at least three types of vaccine deals: Some are buying directly from pharmaceutical companies. Others are buying through regional bodies like the European Union or the African Union. Many will turn to the non-profit Covax program, an alliance of more than 190 countries, which is buying from the drug makers with an eye toward making vaccines available worldwide, especially to poor countries free or at reduced cost. Some governments have signed deals with manufacturers and Covax alike.
The US has secured 400 mn doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, enough for 200 mn people, and is close to arranging 200 mn additional doses by summer, with options to buy up to 500 mn more. It has advance purchase agreements for more than 1 bn doses from four other companies whose inoculations do not yet have U.S. regulatory approval.
The European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch negotiating on behalf of its 27 member states, has nearly 2.3 billion doses under contract and is negotiating for about 300 mn more, according to data collected by UNICEF and Airfinity, a science analytics company. Covax says it has agreements for just over 2 billion vaccine doses although it, too, is keeping its contracts secret. Only about a dozen of the 92 countries that qualify for vaccine subsidies under the alliance have managed to secure separate deals with individual companies, for a combined 500 mn doses. Despite the tremendous taxpayer investments, typically the drug companies fully own the patents. That means that companies can decide how and where the vaccines get manufactured and how much they cost. As the CureVac contract explains it, the company “shall be entitled to exclusively exploit any such” property rights.
This has been a matter of contention for months. A coalition of countries, led by India and South Africa, have petitioned the World Trade Organization to waive intellectual property rights so generic drug makers can begin producing the vaccines. The World Health Organization has endorsed the idea, but it is all but doomed by opposition from the United States and Europe, whose drug makers say patents, and the profits that flow from them, are the lifeblood of innovation. “Governments are creating artificial scarcity,” said Zain Rizvi of the watchdog group Public Citizen. “When the public funds knowledge that is required to end a pandemic, it shouldn’t be kept a secret.”
M Apuzzo and S Gebrekidan are reporters for NYT©2020
The New York Times
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