Better late than never

After six million deaths worldwide, the European Union has recanted on its opposition to waiving intellectual property rights on Covid vaccines, medicines and diagnostics. Its change of stance has come nearly one-and-a-half years after India and South Africa submitted a proposal to this effect, in October 2020 — which was supported by the US but only with respect to vaccines. The recent ‘deal’ between US, EU, South Africa and India, too, applies only to vaccines; it kicks the can down the road on application of TRIPS waiver on other treatments and diagnostics. This half-hearted concession comes at a time when, according to the WHO website, 71.4 per cent of the citizens of high-income countries have been vaccinated with at least one dose, against 14.75 per cent in low-income countries. The global figure of 58 per cent of the population being fully vaccinated conceals this chasm. Meanwhile, the rich and even middle-income countries are busy providing their populations with boosters. The EU is comfortably placed to deal with new Covid waves, as vaccinations surely blunt the severity of illness.

It is not the production of vaccines but their allocation that is the problem. As the WHO concedes, with a global production of 1.5 billion doses a month, there is enough supply to achieve the target of 70 per cent immunisation coverage in every country by mid-2022; “this is not a supply problem, it is an allocation problem,” it says. There are possibly huge vaccine stocks in countries where requirements have been met. It is clear that COVAX, an arrangement to pool vaccines and distribute them, has underperformed. A temporary waiver on Covid vaccines will help liquidate these vaccine stocks for the larger common good. Yet, the latest pact is a case of too little, too late — with the EU trying to look good only after more than fully securing its interests. The latest deal allows for patent waiver and compulsory licensing of vaccines without too many strings attached — and this includes the permission to “allow any proportion of the authorized use to be exported to eligible Members” — clearly a move to overcome supply bottlenecks.

India has been criticised for acquiescing to a deal that is restricted in scope. That’s unfair, as the deal has created space for India to ramp up supplies to low-income countries at reasonable cost. Meanwhile, South Africa and East Asia, too, are likely to emerge as production hubs, as the exchange of know-how and collaborations pick up. That said, the waiver of IPRs has raised the old debate of whether innovators have been short-changed, after having worked hard to produce a vaccine in a year’s time. It is only fair that governments of the richer countries subsidise the innovators since public health is an overriding concern. The latest deal has created the platform for re-examining the TRIPS agreement in view of the pandemic’s experience and building on the gains of the Doha Ministerial — where India piloted the issue of access to affordable medicine at the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

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