[CTC] Vaccine advocacy groups press Biden to break WTO deadlock

[Arthur Stamoulis]

Eighty-three public health, labor, faith, human rights and other civil society organizations just sent a letter to President Biden about his upcoming global COVID-19 vaccine summit (ahead of this week’s WTO General Council meeting).  Initial media coverage from Politico and Common Dreams is pasted below, and a PDF of the letter is available here. <https://tradejusticeedfundorg.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/potus_globalvaccinesummitletter_022122-2.pdf>

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Vaccine advocacy groups press Biden to break WTO deadlock 
BY DOUG PALMER | 02/21/2022 09:01 AM EST
A pharmacist fills a syringe with the Pfizer Covid-19 booster vaccine at a vaccination booster shot clinic in San Rafael, California. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Vaccine advocacy groups are pressing President Joe Biden to help break a nearly two-year-old deadlock at the World Trade Organization by embracing South Africa and India's demand for a broad waiver of intellectual property right protections to fight Covid-19.

"We write to urge you to recognize the greater-than-ever need to dramatically increase the global production, affordability and equitable distribution of Covid vaccines, tests and treatments," Oxfam America, Public Citizen and a broad coalition of more than 80 labor, religious, health and other groups said in a letter to Biden <https://tradejusticeedfundorg.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/potus_globalvaccinesummitletter_022122-1.pdf?source=email>. "At the time of this writing, nearly half of humanity is still not fully vaccinated — including almost 95 percent of people in low-income nations."

The call comes as the WTO General Council is expected to discuss the issue this week and once again fail to come to any conclusion. In addition, the Biden administration is running out of money <https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/17/bidens-new-global-vaccine-push-is-running-out-of-funds-00009588?source=email> to support its global vaccination push in low- and middle-income countries, and negotiations with Congress on securing new funding have stalled.

EU waiver opposition: Biden took a big step last May toward South Africa and India's position by endorsing a waiver of intellectual property rights just for vaccines. But the European Union continues to resist the proposal, arguing that current WTO rules already allow countries to waive IP protections in health emergencies and that logistical factors are the real barriers to the widespread production and distribution of vaccines.

Pharmaceutical companies also oppose the waiver request, which they argue would undermine the financial incentives that encourage them to invest heavily in the development of life-saving drugs.

WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala had hoped to finish work on the vaccine issue as part of a wider health and trade package at the group's 12th Ministerial Conference last November. But that meeting was abruptly postponed after the emergence of the Omicron variant led to new flight restrictions. The meeting still has not been rescheduled.

In late January, Okonjo-Iweala called on members <https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news22_e/gc_27jan22_e.htm?source=email> "to move with all speed" to reach a deal on the vaccine patent issue and other trade-related health measures by the end of February.

"It will be really sad if this organization keeps talking and debating on this pandemic, and that by the time we come up with a response people will not think it relevant," Okonjo-Iweala said.

She has been meeting in recent months with the U.S., the EU, India and South Africa in an effort to broker a deal. "But it is very tough. I have to say there is no easy road," she told members at a Jan. 27 meeting.

Indeed, one week after Okonjo-Iweala called for a redoubling of efforts to agree this month on a broad package of measures to respond to the pandemic, WTO General Council Chair Dacio Castillo of Honduras concluded that a "strategic pause" was needed in his talks with members to give them more time to meet with each other and work out their many differences.

What the groups are asking: In their letter, the advocacy groups called on Biden to put pressure on the EU to drop its opposition by directing U.S. trade negotiators to issue a joint text with South Africa and India that would temporarily waive intellectual property protections on all Covid-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics. Then Biden should up the ante by calling for a special emergency meeting of the General Counsel within 30 days to approve the proposal, the groups say.

They urged Biden to "publicly share vaccine-making recipes that were developed with U.S. taxpayer support." They also said the U.S. should create incentives or compel pharmaceutical companies and other intellectual property holders to share vaccine, diagnostic and medicine-making patent rights, data rights and technical know-how with qualified producers around the world.

However, Republicans in Congress have criticized the Biden administration for supporting a waiver just for vaccines, which they argue would hand valuable intellectual property over to adversaries such as Russia and China.

In a third area, the groups want Biden to announce funding and other support to boost vaccine, diagnostic and treatment manufacturing capacity in Africa, Latin America and Asia and for vaccination, testing and treatment programs in low- and middle-income countries. 

Next steps: The WTO General Council, when it meets on Wednesday and Thursday, is expected to discuss possible dates for rescheduling the MC12 meeting, with June seen as the most likely month. Without a change in the negotiating dynamic in Geneva, the health and trade talks could limp along until then. 

The White House plans to host another global Covid-19 summit in March to call on other countries to put up additional resources to help poorer nations build the necessary infrastructure to launch more comprehensive inoculation campaigns.





https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/02/21/stop-endless-cycle-death-biden-urged-push-emergency-patent-waiver?fbclid=IwAR0FbJ85mu9BcZPq572Q6BJF-LzMNsLZ3WfP_5kWkTUjtsVRpvogO1xo9Js <https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/02/21/stop-endless-cycle-death-biden-urged-push-emergency-patent-waiver?fbclid=IwAR0FbJ85mu9BcZPq572Q6BJF-LzMNsLZ3WfP_5kWkTUjtsVRpvogO1xo9Js>


To Stop 'Endless Cycle of Death,' Biden Urged to Push Emergency Patent Waiver
"President Biden must exercise his current power and bulk up Covid vaccine, test, and treatment production abroad," more than 80 civil society groups write in a new letter.

JAKE JOHNSON <https://www.commondreams.org/author/jake-johnson>February 21, 2022
More than 80 civil society organizations said Monday that in order to finally put a stop to the "endless cycle of death and disability" caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. President Joe Biden should demand that the World Trade Organization convene an emergency session and swiftly approve a suspension of coronavirus vaccine patents.

The coalition, led by the Trade Justice Education Fund, outlined its demands in a new letter <https://tradejusticeedfundorg.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/potus_globalvaccinesummitletter_022122-2.pdf> to the White House ahead of Biden's second planned global vaccine summit next month—a virtual gathering that will come as billions of people in poor countries still lack access to lifesaving shots.

"Ongoing vaccine and treatment shortages in developing countries may be spawning new Covid variants."
"Nearly six months after your first global Covid-19 vaccine summit highlighted the importance of vaccinating at least 70% of the world's population by this fall, the world still has no plan to produce and equitably distribute the supplies needed to accomplish that goal," the coalition wrote to Biden. "We write to urge you to recognize the greater-than-ever need to dramatically increase the global production, affordability, and equitable distribution of Covid vaccines, tests, and treatments."

"Ongoing vaccine and treatment shortages in developing countries," the groups warned, "may be spawning new Covid variants that have created increased demand for boosters and potentially even new vaccine formulas."

Biden has repeatedly vowed <https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/06/03/statement-by-president-joe-biden-on-global-vaccine-distribution/> to make the U.S. "the world's arsenal of vaccines," but the country has thus far delivered fewer than half <https://www.state.gov/covid-19-recovery/vaccine-deliveries/> of the 1.2 billion doses it has pledged to donate to low-income nations and—according to experts <https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/09/14/experts-warn-bidens-global-vaccine-plan-lacks-ambition-crisis-demands>—failed to invest adequately in regional manufacturing efforts across the globe.

The Biden administration has also faced backlash <https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/06/22/biden-urged-pressure-eu-end-outrageous-opposition-vaccine-patent-waiver> from public health campaigners for taking a passive approach <https://inthesetimes.com/article/biden-omicron-wto-trips-waiver-intellectual-property-patents> to WTO negotiations over a vaccine patent waiver proposed in October 2020 by India and South Africa. Biden expressed support <https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/05/05/transformative-hopeful-event-under-pressure-biden-backs-covid-19-vaccine-patent> for a patent waiver in May 2021, but the proposal has remained bottled up at the WTO due to opposition from major U.S. allies, including Germany and the United Kingdom.

In their letter Monday, the civil society groups urged Biden to partner with India and South Africa to issue a "joint temporary TRIPS waiver text... on Covid-19-related vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics."

The coalition also called on Biden to push the WTO General Council—the organization's highest decision-making body—to hold an emergency virtual session and "approve the waiver within 30 days."

"Only U.S. leadership in partnership with the waiver proposal's initial sponsors can break the WTO deadlock caused by ongoing European opposition," the coalition's letter states.

Proponents of a waiver argue that a temporary suspension of patent protections is needed to remove legal barriers that are currently inhibiting <https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/02/14/african-civil-society-slams-moderna-attempt-derail-vaccine-project>vaccine production in developing countries, including on the African continent, where more than 80% of the population has yet to receive a single coronavirus vaccine dose.
"The world is completely failing to reach the goals of getting the vaccine out to the people who need it," Tom Hart, president of the ONE Campaign, said <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-14/biden-s-global-vaccine-push-falters-echoing-home-front-struggle>last week. "We need a massive new infusion of vaccine distribution in the poorest parts of the world."

Experts have recently estimated <https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/01/06/end-variant-whack-mole-study-says-world-needs-22-billion-more-mrna-vaccine-doses> that the world needs more than 20 billion additional vaccine doses to end the Omicron wave and prevent new variants from emerging.

"We are facing a global pandemic, a global pandemic that will stay with us for a long time," South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Friday. "And all that has been asked for is that a TRIPS waiver should be done within a set period of time so as to enable those countries that do not have easy access to vaccines to have access to vaccines."

The patent waiver as crafted by South Africa and India would also apply to Covid-19 therapeutics such as the pill produced by Pfizer, which is currently building an exclusionary "patent wall <https://www.citizen.org/news/pfizer-is-building-a-paxlovid-patent-wall-new-research-reveals/>" around the drug.

"We're doubling down on a two-tier world when it comes to Covid-19—rich, highly vaccinated nations with easy access to both preventive measures and treatments, and poorer nations trying to get by without either," Othoman Mellouk, a medicine access advocate with the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, wrote <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/20/covid-treatment-pill-big-pharma-antiviral-drugs> in an op-ed for The Guardian on Sunday. "It's vital that we don't sleepwalk into giving corporations so much control over who gets to live and who gets to die, all balanced on what they deem an acceptable bottom line."

In addition to demanding that Biden work proactively to advance a patent waiver, the civil society coalition urged the president to:

Publicly share vaccine-making recipes that were developed with U.S. taxpayer support, and incentivize or compel pharmaceutical companies and other intellectual property holders to share vaccine, diagnostic, and medicine-making patent rights, data rights, and technical know-how with qualified producers around the world; and
Announce financial and other support for the use and expansion of vaccine, diagnostic, and treatment manufacturing capacity in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, as well as for vaccination as test-and-treatment programming in low- and middle-income countries.
"Two years into the pandemic and only about 1-in-10 people in low-income countries have received their first vaccine dose, leaving the world vulnerable to the next Covid variant," Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of the Trade Justice Education Fund, said in a statement Monday.

"President Biden must exercise his current power and bulk up Covid vaccine, test, and treatment production abroad," Stamoulis added, "so we can finally end this pandemic."
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