Covid-19: National self-interest, wealth gaps and patent rights are major barriers to global vaccination

You will not be able to enter Covid-19 Pandemic We are behind us until the world’s population is almost immune to vaccination or exposure to previous illnesses.

But a truly global vaccination campaign will look very different from what we are seeing today.For example, as of January 20 More people are vaccinated in Israel (Population less than 10 million) From the combined Africa and Latin America.

Despite recent Question About the effectiveness of First single dose of vaccineThere are clear disparities in the development of international vaccines.

That is the problem. As long as the existing reservoir of the growing virus still exists, it can be re-spread to unvaccinated or unvaccinated populations. It can also be mutated into a more contagious or more deadly variant.

The way Israel led vaccination.

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Contrary to intuition, the following increase in transmission rate New British variant, Worse than the same percentage increase in mortality. This is because an increase in transmission rate increases the number of cases (and therefore deaths) exponentially, whereas an increase in mortality increases only deaths linearly.

Evolutionary pressure on the virus inevitably favors mutations that make the disease more contagious, or the virus itself more vaccine-resistant. Therefore, it is clear that the interest of all countries is in universal vaccination. But this is not the trajectory we are on.

Politics and interests

Fortunately, in already vaccinated countries, vaccines are not (mostly) assigned by wealth or power, but by prioritizing the countries at highest risk.But at the national level, national wealth Decide on vaccine deployment..

But in the past, it has been able to eradicate diseases around the world, including smallpox and viral infections with a much higher mortality rate than COVID-19.

There are two barriers to the rapid pursuit of similar goals for the current pandemic.

• Because major pharmaceutical companies focus on profits, they strictly control the intellectual property they are developing with new vaccines.
• The country finds it difficult to see beyond national interests. Not surprisingly, politicians are dedicated only to their voters.

At this time, there is no global system to tackle any of these issues. The patents for each vaccine are owned by their developers, and the World Health Organization (WHO) is too weak to be the World Ministry of Health.

Polio vaccine model

However, overcoming the profit motives of major pharmaceutical companies has previously been achieved.

In 1955, Jonas Salk Polio vaccine In the midst of a pandemic. The news first encountered skepticism. Even an employee of his own lab resigned in protest of his movement too fast in clinical trials.

However, when a large placebo-controlled clinical trial in 1.6 million children proved he was correct, he set out to maximize the worldwide distribution of this life-saving vaccine. Declared not to obtain a patent. Asked who owns the patent, he replied famously, “Well, the people I would say. No patents. Can you patent the sun?”

In response to the present moment, Israel (then a new state) was also experiencing a rapidly prevailing polio epidemic. Efforts to purchase vaccines from the United States have failed because all American children have not yet been vaccinated.So the scientist named Nathan Goldblum Sent to Soak’s lab Learn how to make a new vaccine.

No lawyer is involved and no contract has been signed. The young Dr. Goldbram established a Soak vaccine manufacturing facility in Israel in 1956, and mass vaccination was underway by early 1957.

Suspending patent rights

A small and relatively poor country in the 1950s, Israel produced vaccines locally and eventually became the third country in the world to eradicate polio (after the United States and Denmark). A handful of scientists, a modest budget, and most importantly, were unpatented.

Like Soak, Goldblum knew that the virus completely ignored political borders.He was also involved in being very successful Palestinian polio vaccination campaign In Gaza.

Recently, AIDS treatment was seen in a very successful international campaign in the early 2000s. Distributed in poor countries.. Pharmaceutical companies that own patented medicines have been forced to supply them at cost or at no cost, rather than at market prices set in developed countries. This was achieved by public pressure and the government’s willingness to support the necessary policies.

The temporary withdrawal of a successful Covid-19 vaccine patent comes at a small price to pay for an exit strategy from this global and incredibly costly crisis, with or without compensation to developers. It seems that.

Act locally and think globally

Overcoming national interests is probably more complicated. Obviously, countries are interested in immunizing the most vulnerable people first. But at some point, it becomes more efficient for a country to start vaccination against its neighbors (the countries most exposed through people’s movements and trade) long before everyone is vaccinated.

Unfortunately, developed countries today behave as if they reach 100% vaccination rates before a single dose, and many buy far beyond what is required for 100% vaccination. doing.

The· Covax plan Distributing vaccines to poor countries has so far Funding efforts It has not yet provided a single dose of the vaccine. Even if Covax is fully funded, it is primarily aimed at donating an inadequate number of vaccines to the poorest countries, rather than actually bringing about a universal vaccination program.

Nevertheless, it is not a dream to overcome the profits of maximizing the profits of major pharmaceutical companies and the national focus of the government. The world did it before.

Ilan Noy is a professor and chair of disaster and climate change economics at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington. Ami Neuberger is a clinical assistant professor at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

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