Would freeing anti-Covid vaccines from their patent make it possible to increase production capacities?
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Top Photo / Sipa USA / SIPA
This Wednesday, communist activists and elected officials demanded the release of anti-Covid vaccine patents.
For some, making these vaccines a common good for humanity would quickly increase production capacity.
And thus to vaccinate the world population as quickly as possible.
"All French adults who wish can be vaccinated by the end of the summer".
This is what Emmanuel Macron promised during his surprise television intervention on Tuesday evening.
It is still necessary to have doses for everyone.
In the aftermath of the opinion issued by the High Authority for Health (HAS) on the AstraZeneca vaccine, which will be reserved for people under the age of 65, France will now have three vaccines to fight against Covid-19, which already uses messenger RNAs from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
From spring, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines should be produced in France.
But with supplies slipping, and while AstraZeneca has already warned of major delays in deliveries to the EU before even starting them, the head of state's promise seems elusive.
What if releasing the anti-Covid vaccines from their patent was the solution?
Vaccines that would be placed in the global public domain, the production of which could be scaled up almost everywhere on the planet.
And thus respond as quickly as possible to international demand.
This track quickly emerged and today finds defenders in part of the French political class.
But would this effectively solve the problem of supply?
Release patents to produce more
The anti-Covid vaccination for all, the idea emerged even before the first vaccines were fully developed.
Last June, a forum was published calling for making anti-Covid vaccines a common good of humanity.
Among the 155 signatories, a host of Nobel Prize for Peace or Medicine, former heads of state or government, or Hollywood stars.
Mikhail Gorbachev, Denis Mukwege, Lula, Matt Damon and Sharon Stone have put their names on it.
A wish also formulated by part of the French political class.
Several dozen activists and elected Communists demonstrated this Wednesday in this direction.
"Vaccines: common good for humanity", "requisition of factories", could we read on the signs of the thirty activists gathered in front of the Pfizer headquarters in Paris, alongside the deputies Stéphane Peu, Alain Bruneel and Senator Laurence Cohen.
"No profits on the pandemic, no property on the patents", hammered the secretary general of the PC Fabien Roussel, urging Pfizer and the "Big Pharma" to "lift the patents which protect the vaccines which must become generics".
He also asked France and the EU "to initiate a public license procedure" which would oblige laboratories to transmit their patents.
Same slogans in Lyon, where about twenty activists gathered in front of the offices of the World Health Organization (WHO) at the call of the PCF.
"The subject is too serious to leave the patents in the hands of private interests", explained Raphaël Debû, departmental secretary of the party.
Billions of euros invested
From the end of spring 2020, when no serum had yet proved its worth, Emmanuel Macron also pleaded for anti-Covid vaccines to be "a global public good".
At the World Immunization Summit, the Head of State pledged that France "will increase its contribution by 100 million euros when a vaccine [...] is available, in order to ensure its distribution to an affordable price ".
But the hope of international solidarity has gradually turned to vaccine nationalism, making the business of the laboratories the quickest to provide the precious vaccines.
A number of states have invested billions of euros to finance research - the United States and the European Union in the lead - and the announcement of effective and soon available vaccines has sounded the hour of return on investment to be the first served.
In the game of supply and demand, and with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines marketed around 15 euros per dose (or 30 euros to vaccinate a person), the pharmaceutical companies are the big winners.
They are in a strong position and have no interest in lifting their patents and allowing the production of generic vaccines that would not earn them a dime.
"In addition to the legal lock, the technological lock"
Beyond this financial aspect, would the release of patents be the right answer to increase vaccination?
"Not necessarily in the short term," responds Jocelyn Raude, teacher-researcher in social psychology of health and infectious diseases at the School of Advanced Studies in Public Health (EHESP).
But in the medium term, this could be a concrete solution to promote the access of developing countries to vaccination.
This has already been done in the past, in particular for the treatment of HIV, with the lifting of patents for antiretroviral treatments, but also for other diseases.
It is often won hard, under pressure from NGOs, and it concerns drugs.
Most of the vaccines we use today are already in the public domain ”.
What if the patents for the anti-Covid vaccines were lifted, could factories overnight produce hundreds of millions of doses around the world?
Would they be able to manufacture in particular the vaccines of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which are based on the recent technique of messenger RNA?
Nothing is less sure.
“You need technological know-how.
We are here on cutting-edge techniques, which have only been developed for a few years, underlines Jocelyn Raude.
Faced with such technological breakthroughs, very few manufacturers are able to manufacture these pharmaceutical products.
Even if all the patents were withdrawn, there would be, in addition to the legal lock, a technological lock ”.
The Covax system in action
For the time being, the organization of vaccination in less well-off countries is being organized through the UN, thanks to the Covax system, intended to ensure the equitable sharing of anti-Covid vaccines.
North Korea, Algeria, Gaza, but also India and Monaco are on the list of the first beneficiaries unveiled Wednesday.
The doses - about 337.2 million - will cover 3.3% of the population in 145 countries and territories.
“All countries should receive doses commensurate with the size of their population in order to immunize the highest priority groups,” said Ann Lindstrand, immunization specialist at WHO.
India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Brazil will follow.
North Korea is also on the list, along with a small number of wealthy countries including South Korea, Canada, Monaco, New Zealand, and Saudi Arabia.
Led by the WHO, the Vaccine Alliance and the Coalition for Innovations in Epidemic Preparedness (Cepi), Covax aims to provide doses to 20% of the population of the 190 participating nations by the end of 2021.
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