With the COVID-19 Delta variant spreading a rapid clip, it’s imperative we get as many shots in arms as possible—and this requires addressing global vaccine shortages. BIO's Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath sent a letter yesterday to USTR outlining what the industry’s doing to help—and how a proposal before the WTO would make the problem worse.
The biotech sector “has continued to expand global efforts to produce COVID vaccines and therapeutics, and to make maximum efforts working with governments, multilateral organizations including COVAX, as well as other stakeholders to get those vaccines to people in low-and middle-income countries,” she writes.
“The best estimates are that approximately 11 billion COVID vaccine doses will be manufactured globally in 2021, and billions more in the first part of 2022,” she continues.
Global partnerships help—but an IP waiver won't. A waiver of the WTO Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement would lead to further supply and capacity problems, hurt U.S. workers, and undermine incentives to invest in innovations in the future, as we’ve explained.
Nearly 300 global biotechnology companies and associations agree—read what they said.
We raise a few questions about such a waiver with the administration—including how to keep trade secrets and knowhow from being “irreversibly appropriated by others,” whether such a waiver would apply domestically or to platform technologies, and the impact on U.S. jobs, among others.
As the WTO embarks on IP negotiations and we all seek to address vaccine access globally, BIO asks the administration to consult with us and industry leaders to “have the best possible information about the impact of those positions on the thousands of Americans who are working to produce COVID vaccines.”
Read the whole letter.
Joe’s World: The WTO IP negotiations will be long and contentious—and will not address the real problems related to global access to COVID vaccines and treatments. The United States needs to keep stakeholders like BIO and its members fully informed of its negotiating positions in the WTO in accordance with its own “Transparency Principles.” Moreover, it needs to address serious questions about the harmful impact a waiver would have on the biotech industry and the U.S. economy. BIO is committed to solving the problems of global access to vaccines, but we also need to ensure that WTO negotiations do not imperil real solutions—now, or during future pandemics. – Joe Damond, BIO’s Deputy Chief of Policy and EVP of International Affairs
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