Coronavirus: the Vaccine War has Entered a Critical Phase

By Eduardo Febbro on September 27, 2020

https://www.resumen-english.org/2020/09/coronavirus-the-vaccine-war-has-entered-a-critical-phase/

A glaring omission in this article is that it fails to mention Cuba in the list of countries that have begun clinical trials on humans for a vaccine against Covid-19. Cuba’s Soberana 01 has advanced to the second phase with positive results and if that trend continues Cuba will have its own vaccine available to the population in the first quarter of 2021. It goes without saying that Cuba would share any proven vaccine with the world as they have with their doctors. – editorial

The vaccine to neutralize Covid-19 is the messiah of the 21st century. Some define its research and production as a fierce competition between States and pharmaceutical groups, others analyze it as a political opportunity or an argument of global geopolitical influence (soft power). In the midst of this planetary brawl, there are groups that seek a balance and try to federate the States to provide the vaccine to the poorest countries.

This is the case of Covax (Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access). This is an initiative that brings together 156 States (64 rich ones) and is part of the ACT Accelerator, a device created by the UN to facilitate access to tools for fighting Covid-19 (diagnosis, treatments, vaccines). ACT is made up of governments, scientists, companies, civil society, philanthropic organizations and multilateral organizations.

The funds raised by Covax are far from responding to the world’s needs. Of the $32 billion needed, only $2.5 billion was raised. At the United Nations, Latin America and Australia called for free access to vaccines while the United States, Europe, and Japan and another small core of countries have already reserved more than half of the doses when they come to market. The position defended by Argentine President Alberto Fernandez in his first speech to the United Nations is, “The vaccine against the coronavirus has to be a global public good.” The competitive reality is far from fulfilling that approach. Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Center of IHEID (Institute for Higher International and Development Studies) in Geneva, told the newspaper Le Monde that “some rich countries find it difficult to give up part of the resources available to them and help others”.

In a very short time the solidarity rhetoric was changed to another scenario: “Japan First”, “America First”, “Europe First”. Suerie Moon warns that “many countries have already reserved the best part of the cake for themselves through bilateral agreements. But the cake is not infinite”. The pandemic, for now, has no end: 993,438 deaths (up to yesterday) since December, 32,622,490 million people infected, of which 22,360,200 are considered “cured”. In the last week there were 295,000 new cases per day, which is three percent more than the previous week (22 percent more as far as Europe is concerned). The development of the vaccine has become a “winning shot” according to the formula used by British writer and financial columnist Matthew Lynn. This “winning shot” involves China, the United States, Great Britain, France, Australia, Germany, Russia plus other countries such as Mexico, Brazil or Argentina which, through agreements with laboratories, technology transfer or local research, have entered into the research and development of the vaccine.

On September 16, the NGO Oxfam published a report with updated data on the hierarchy of the vaccine: a group of countries representing 13 percent of the world’s population guaranteed, with the signing of contracts, 51 percent of the advanced delivery of the vaccine. The AstraZeneca group and the University of Oxford have signed the highest percentage of public contracts to date. Sanofi, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Modern America, the Chinese laboratory Sinovac and the Russian institute Gamaleïa sold hundreds of millions of doses in advance (including agreements with local manufacturers).

In total, 5.3 billion doses are already committed to the laboratories whose tests passed phase 3. The United States, Great Britain, the European Union, Switzerland, Israel, Japan, Hong Kong and Australia are, according to the NGO, the biggest hoarders of the vaccine. “Vital access to vaccines should not depend on where you live, nor on the money you have,” laments Robert Silverman, a member of Oxfam America. In the result of his cross-analysis, Oxfam writes: “The calculations expose a broken system that protects the monopolies and the profits of the pharmaceutical corporations and favors the rich nations, while artificially restricting production and leaving the majority of the world’s population waiting longer than necessary for a vaccine”.

The “health nationalism” of the great powers takes precedence over the “global public good”. Health selfishness is proportional to the rank of the country. For example, neither the United States nor China accepted to be part of the Covax device to facilitate access to anti-Covid-19 devices. The 156 countries that joined the group are equivalent to 64 percent of the world’s population. But the two great powers are not. However, the five groups whose experiments with the vaccine are in a very advanced cycle lack the global capacity to supply it to the world population. The Oxfam report looked at the current arrangements and the percentages of planned production. Its analysis leads the NGO to point out that “the same companies simply do not have the capacity to produce enough vaccines for all those who need them. Even in the extremely unlikely event that all five vaccines are successful, nearly two-thirds (61 percent) of the world’s population will not have a vaccine until at least 2022. It is much more likely that some of these experiments will fail, leaving more people without access. If all five vaccines are successful, 5.94 billion doses could be produced, which would be enough for 2.9 billion humans (two doses per person are estimated). Supplies for 5.303 billion doses have already been agreed, of which 2.728 billion (51 percent) were purchased by developed countries.

That leaves 2.575 billion doses promised for distribution to developing countries. The percentages between needs and reality do not add up. In turn, there are laboratories such as the Modern American biotechnology company that set two different prices for their vaccine: between 12 and 16 dollars in the United States and $35 in the rest of the world. The only solution for everyone would be for the laboratories to share their technology without patents.

The antidote would then become “a global public good” and not a new profit-making object. AstraZeneca said it would allocate 66 percent of its production to developing countries and has already committed to deliver 300 million doses to the Covax circuit.

The ACT Accelerator has a Covid Tool through which it was calculated that the research, manufacture, acquisition and distribution of a vaccine for each inhabitant of the planet entails a cost of 70.6 thousand million dollars. President Alberto Fernández put Argentina in the circuit of agreements with the most advanced laboratories.

Together with Mexico, Argentina signed an agreement to produce the vaccine developed by the AstraZeneca laboratory and the University of Oxford. The country is then in that space that specialists call “safe anticipation zone”. This is not the case of much more vulnerable nations. The lives of hundreds of millions of people in the world depend on science, on solidarity and on the fact that science does not work like a business.




Source: Pagina 12, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau