As many Americans and media commentators talk about the COVID pandemic in the past tense, the virus continues to make people sick and kills primarily those who are unvaccinated in the U.S. and around the world. Over 6 million people have died from the coronavirus globally, with nearly one million who’ve lost their lives in the U.S.
While the numbers of new cases in the U.S. have dramatically declined after the omicron wave peaked late last year, a new more contagious subvariant of omicron called BA.2 has been on the rise in Europe, and could soon trigger another wave in America.
The UN recently reported that only about 13 percent of the populations in low-income countries had been vaccinated, compared with nearly 70 percent in high-income nations. Alarmingly, the COVID death toll is four times higher in poor nations than wealthy ones. A recent meeting of representatives from the U.S., EU, India and South Africa, known as the “quad” discussed the urgent need to waive intellectual property rights in order to make COVID vaccines, treatment and testing available to the world’s most vulnerable people. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Robbie Silverman, senior manager of private sector advocacy at Oxfam America who explains why a tentative agreement reached by the “quad” is inadequate and a potential setback for vaccine, treatment and testing access equity.
ROBBIE SILVERMAN: Close to the start of the pandemic, South Africa, India and more than 100 countries around the world filed a petition with the World Trade Organization calling for a waiver of intellectual property restriction that would allow those countries to actually manufacture life-saving COVID medicines for their own citizens.
They were basically saying the house is on fire; we are in a global pandemic. We need to suspend the normal intellectual property rules that allow pharmaceutical companies to have monopoly control over this life-saving technology. Give us the recipe, give us the technical know-how. We will manufacture our own doses for our own citizens.
So that was the call issued close to the start of the pandemic that to his great credit, President Biden last spring announced his support in favor of that waiver at the WTO. And that was really a single watershed moment, a real demonstration of U.S. leadership. The problem is that since that time, negotiations have dragged on and dragged on and dragged on while millions of people around the world have fallen ill and died.
And the central challenge is that the countries that were calling for the waiver simply don’t have access to lifesaving vaccines because pharmaceutical companies have prioritized selling to rich countries. So if you look at where the doses have actually gone, they’ve gone almost exclusively to rich countries that have hoarded doses for their own citizens to the point that, you know, rich countries have now thrown away more doses because they’ve expired than have been provided to low-income countries.
And so it’s a result of this inequality that, you know, the world’s sort of poor and middle-income countries banded together to ask for the WTO waiver. In the last week, there’s now been a potential movement in terms of what a waiver might look like. And on the one hand, it’s good news that the negotiations may finally be achieving some result.
The bad news is that the deal that’s on the table right now really isn’t a very good deal. And it falls short, I think, in three key ways. The first is that it just covers vaccines. It doesn’t cover testing or treatments. And we now know that there are multiple effective treatments that are actually critical to treating the virus, saving lives and getting the public health system back on its feet so hospitals aren’t completely inundated. So that’s one big problem.
The second big problem is that the geographic scope is limited. It leaves some countries out. Some countries are in. And what we really need is a global solution to a global pandemic that includes every country around the world.
The third is probably the biggest issue, which is the current deal on the table is just the patents themselves and not the technical knowledge that goes along with it. And so for the COVID vaccine, you need the recipe itself, but you also need the knowledge for how to sort of put that recipe into action to actually start producing doses. And so, you know, on the one hand, we’re gratified that the process at the WTO is moving. But we really think the current deal on the table leaves much to be desired.
And so we’re urging for a waiver that includes vaccines, testing and treatment. That includes all countries around the world. And that includes not just the recipe, but also the technical knowledge behind that. And we think that actually would be the breakthrough that we need to finally get the pandemic under control.
SCOTT HARRIS: Robbie, I did want to ask you about the major obstacles in the way of getting vaccines, treatments and tests to the majority of people in the world today.
I’ve read that Great Britain, Switzerland and the European Union have staked out positions that oppose providing not only the patents, waiving the patents, but also they’ve been reluctant to force these pharmaceutical companies to offer up the recipe and the technical know-how that you referred to.
ROBBIE SILVERMAN: I think this really comes down to the immense political power that Big Pharma has in multiple countries around the world.
And if you look at the countries that are most vociferously opposed to this waiver of intellectual property rights, it is exactly those countries with the biggest domestic pharmaceutical company manufacturing base. So that includes Germany. It includes Switzerland, the U.K., France. And I should also note that the U.S., even while President Biden announced his support for the waiver, the U.S. has frankly not done enough to actually secure the waiver and get it across the finish line.
And so it really is those countries that have the biggest pharmaceutical companies in them that are the most opposed. And in a way, this isn’t too surprising because the pandemic, while causing an untold amount of suffering throughout the world, has made a small number of people extraordinarily rich. And pharmaceutical companies are doing extremely really well.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Robbie Silverman (22:41) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.
For more information, visit Oxfam America at oxfamamerica.org.
