‘An Abomination’: Campaigners Blast WTO Alternative to Covid Patent Waiver

Global health justice advocates on Tuesday rejected the World Trade Organization’s corporate-friendly alternative to India and South Africa’s widely supported motion to waive the intellectual property monopolies that are undermining the ramped up production of lifesaving Covid-19 vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics by generic manufacturers.

The WTO’s alternative proposal—leaked on March 15 and submitted formally on Tuesday—”not only fails to remove intellectual property barriers standing in the way of global access to Covid vaccines, tests, and treatments, it actually imposes some new ones,” Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of the Trade Justice Education Fund, said in a statement.

More than five million people have died directly from Covid-19 since October 2, 2020, when India and South Africa first introduced their popular Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) waiver proposal to suspend coronavirus-related patents for the duration of the pandemic.

Unlike India and South Africa’s proposed waiver, which is backed by more than 100 WTO members, “this text does not suspend intellectual property barriers and even adds new conditions that undermine countries’ abilities to use existing WTO rules allowing production of medicines without patentholder permission,” said Lori Wallach, director of Rethink Trade at the American Economic Liberties Project.

Knowledge sharing and technology transfer, experts say, would lead to a greater global supply and an equitable distribution of treatments. However, many wealthy governments, led by the European Union, have teamed up with pharmaceutical giants to stonewall attempts to challenge highly profitable intellectual property monopolies.

Epidemiologists estimate that billions of additional doses are needed to adequately inoculate the world, making expanded generic production an urgent necessity. Just 15.7% of people in low-income countries have received at least one shot to date.

WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala attended the informal TRIPS Council meeting in person—an uncommon move that likely signals her desire for swift action. The council is expected to discuss and possibly agree to the deal, which has been sent to all 164 WTO members for their consideration, during its meeting scheduled for Friday.

According to Melinda St. Louis, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division, “The text just tabled is nearly identical to the one that leaked on March 15—which civil society and academic experts around the world decried as ‘the lowest common denominator,’ an ‘abomination,’ and ‘worse than nothing.'”

As Public Citizen noted, the March 15 leaked document would impose new barriers on countries attempting to remove intellectual property barriers and increase Covid medicines production. Instead of waiving barriers, it would impose new conditions limiting the existing WTO rules that now allow countries to issue compulsory licenses for patented products, for example a new obligation to identify all patents covered by a waiver application.

The WTO alternative does not cover Covid tests or treatments. The leaked text would cover only vaccines, at a stage in the pandemic when world leaders acknowledge that testing and treatments are critically important.

It also excludes entire countries. It applies only to “developing countries” that “exported <10%” of the world’s vaccines in 2021 (which would exclude China and Brazil), as well as developed countries that might export to countries in need. It may also inadvertently exclude least developed countries.

Given that news of the WTO’s corporate-friendly alternative text comes just two days before the one-year anniversary of President Joe Biden’s historic announcement of U.S. support for a TRIPS waiver for vaccines, Public Citizen announced that a candlelight vigil for vaccine equity will be held at the White House and in cities around the country on Wednesday.

While Big Pharma refuses to share its vaccine recipes—raking in billions of dollars in profits by monopolizing publicly funded knowledge—the federal government owns a patent for a key spike-protein technology that Pfizer, Moderna, and other companies used to develop their jabs, which gives it the legal authority to distribute the ingredient list and manufacturing instructions.

As Public Citizen has stressed for months, the Biden administration could, with an investment of just $25 billion dollars—around 3% of what the U.S. spends on its military each year—establish regional manufacturing hubs around the world to produce eight billion coronavirus vaccine doses in less than a year.

Originally published at Commondreams.org, written by Kenny Stancil.