Good Day BIO: We didn’t need a TRIPS waiver

We didn’t need a waiver of COVID vaccine intellectual property protections—we have vaccine oversupply. But we DO need a Chief Agricultural Negotiator at USTR, says BIO in a letter to Senate leadership ahead of Biden's meeting with Mexico's President today. We tell you why. (721 words, 3 minutes, 36 seconds)

Global vaccine oversupply shows we didn’t need a TRIPS waiver

Just weeks after the WTO agreed to waive COVID-19 vaccine intellectual property protections, governments, vaccine manufacturers, and vaccination sites worldwide report throwing away millions of doses due to oversupply.

In a nutshell: “We don’t have a capacity issue around the planet,” Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel says in The Wall Street Journal. “It was true two years ago, it’s not true today.” Moderna needs to discard 30 million doses after failing to find takers.

Why the oversupply? Drugmakers produced 13.9 billion doses so far, and efforts like COVAX distributed doses to lower-income countries. According to UNICEF, COVAX ensured “there’s now enough supply of COVID-19 vaccines to reach global demand.”

Worldwide, more than 5.26 billion people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine—68.5% of the population, The New York Times says. Many who are not vaccinated don’t want to be, The Wall Street Journal notes.

We don’t need a WTO TRIPS waiver now. We never did. “The agreement announced by the WTO will do nothing to increase COVID vaccination rates in the developing world, while at the same time setting a harmful precedent for the world’s ability to respond to the next pandemic” by weakening IP protections that drive innovation, says BIO President and CEO Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath.

In fact, we can increase access to drugs around the world AND maintain IP. The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) has been helping lower income countries access medicine while protecting IP since 2010, and they work with WHO and the NIH to share COVID-19 biotech, including Merck’s molnupiravir and Pfizer’s oral COVID-19 treatment through voluntary licensing agreements.

Currently, therapeutics IP is still protected—and the vaccine experience shows it should stay that way.

More Health Care News:

HHS: Administration secures 3.2 million doses of Novavax COVID-19 vaccine
“The protein-based, adjuvanted vaccine will be made available for free to states, jurisdictions, federal pharmacy partners, and federally qualified health centers if it receives U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), and recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).”

U.S.-Mexico meeting today is opportunity to address biotech trade concerns

As President Biden hosts Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador today, agriculture and trade should be high on the agenda.

The context: Mexico is failing to uphold its commitments under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA), and failing to approve new agricultural biotech crops, as highlighted during the recent Congressional hearings on the Biden Administration's Trade Policy Agenda. President López Obrador wants to end imports of genetically modified corn for human consumption by 2024, a move that will hurt Mexican and U.S. consumers.

Mexico's proposed ban is a lose-lose scenario, where Mexico will end up paying more for corn imports—to the tune of an additional $4.4 billion over the next 10 years—while GDP will decline in Mexico by $4.3 billion and the U.S. by $7.95 billion, as we explain on Bio.News.

And it will only make things worse, as international demand for corn continues to grow, adverse weather events persist, and supply chain disruptions as a result of international conflicts, such as Ukraine's war with Russia, intensify. 

What is BIO doing? We continue to urge the Biden administration to assert pressure on Mexico to reverse its decision to phase out GM corn imports and return to timely and science-based risk assessments of biotech traits for agricultural products, consistent with its international obligations. U.S. Trade Rep. Ambassador Katherine Tai echoed these sentiments in her recent meeting with her Mexican counterpart at the USMCA Free Trade Commission meetings last week and has indicated the U.S. could pursue dispute resolution under USMCA if Mexico fails to resolve this issue.

President Biden’s Tuesday: Hosting the President of Mexico (see above) before flying to Israel and then Saudi Arabia. The White House COVID-19 response team will give a briefing today.

What’s Happening on Capitol Hill: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is out with “mild” COVID and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) is out with a foot injury, potentially delaying Democrats’ action on drug price controls and a tax package, POLITICO reports. The Senate Finance Committee will hold a hearing on the nomination of Rebecca Lee Haffajee for Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. The House Committee on Rules holds a hearing on the Women’s Health Protection Act addressing abortion rights.