The worsening COVID crisis in India, Brazil, and elsewhere has intensified the need for all interested global parties to urgently step-up efforts to get vaccines and therapeutics to patients who need them most, wherever in the world they may live. BIO is proposing the establishment of a program to do just that.
We need to establish a COVID Global Strategy for Harnessing Access Reaching Everyone (SHARE) Program, said BIO President and CEO Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath in a letter to President Biden yesterday.
The SHARE Program would consist of three parts:
- Ensuring sufficient global supply of vaccines. Governments must adopt policies that facilitate and expedite the export of key raw materials and manufacturing supplies and identify supply chain bottlenecks, while manufacturers must increase output.
- Ensuring safe and expeditious global access to vaccines and therapeutics. The United States and other governments with significant domestic supply must pledge to donate meaningful quantities of supplies, vaccines, and resources to health care systems as well as allow export of COVID-19 vaccines from American facilities. Recipient countries should adopt policies to accept and adopt regulatory approvals in countries of origin.
- Ongoing efforts to strengthen and support health care systems in low- and middle-income countries addressing COVID. In particular, the U.S. government should examine opportunities to implement broader initiatives that leverage the learnings of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
BIO’s letter explains in greater detail how all of this might work—read it here.
What’s important to note: vaccine manufacturers are already sharing and providing aid. Pfizer is donating $70 million in COVID-19 medicines to India, “the largest humanitarian relief effort in [the] company’s history,” while Moderna will donate 500 million doses to COVAX—and these are just two examples among many from biopharmaceutical manufacturers large and small.
What we DON’T need:weakened IP protections in the form of the TRIPS waiver, which could result in supply and capacity problems and harm U.S. workers and the innovation needed to end this pandemic.
Read: The Washington Post Editorial Board says a patent-free “people’s vaccine” is not the best way to help poor countries
More Health Care News:
The New York Times: FDA to authorize Pfizer vaccine for adolescents 12-15 years old by early next week
“The clearance, in the form of an amendment to the existing emergency use authorization for the Pfizer vaccine, could come as early as late this week.”
UN News: Latest deadly Ebola virus outbreak in DR Congo declared over
“With nearly 60 experts on the ground, WHO helped local workers to trace contacts as soon as the outbreak was declared, providing treatment, engaging communities, and vaccinating nearly 2,000 people at high risk, including over 500 frontline workers.”
