Biden Told Not to Give Publicly Owned Covid-19 Vaccine Tech Over to Corporations

A coalition of advocacy groups on Tuesday implored U.S. President Joe Biden not to give control of emerging, publicly funded coronavirus vaccine technology to profit-seeking corporations, warning such a move would double down on a privatized approach that has failed to ensure equitable vaccine access worldwide.

Released ahead of the White House’s Summit on the Future of Covid-19 Vaccines that kicked off Tuesday morning, a new open letter signed by 29 progressive organizations argues “there is no compelling reason to offer this technology on a monopoly basis to a corporation, and a profoundly compelling reason to make the technology as open and readily accessible as possible across the globe.”

The technology in question is the so-called pan-coronavirus vaccine that the U.S. Army’s Walter Reed Institute of Research has been developing and testing in recent months.

Dubbed a potential “super vaccine,” the Walter Reed shot is aimed at providing protection against all current and future strains of Covid-19 as well as other coronaviruses. The vaccine has reportedly yielded promising results in early trials.

The advocacy coalition—which includes Public Citizen, Physicians for Human Rights, Health GAP, and the Revolving Door Project—wrote in their letter Tuesday that the Biden administration must “maintain public control of the Walter Reed vaccine and share its benefits and technology openly with the world.”

Such a strategy would contrast sharply with the current, deeply unequal coronavirus vaccination effort, which is dominated by a handful of pharmaceutical corporations that are reaping huge profits.

Even though they received massive sums of federal funding and made use of government technology to develop their shots, companies such as Pfizer and Moderna have monopoly control over vaccine production, artificially constraining supply as billions of people around the world go without access to the lifesaving shots more than two years into the pandemic.

“To date, development of the Walter Reed vaccine has been a triumph of government investment in public health,” the letter continues. “We ask for it to remain that way as the Army seeks partners for further trials and mass production.”

Originally published at Commondreams.org.