It has become clear that the western pharmaceutical industry could barely supply the west, let alone anywhere else, many countries turned to Chinese and Russian vaccines. As a result, a third of all humanity is now largely dependent on supplies of one vaccine from one company in India. This colossal mess was entirely predictable.
One year ago, researchers at Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, frontrunners in the race to develop a coronavirus vaccine, stated that they intended to allow any manufacturer, anywhere, the rights to their jab. One of the early licences they signed was with the Serum Institute, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer. One month later, acting on advice from the Gates Foundation, Oxford changed course and signed over exclusive rights to AstraZeneca, a UK-based multinational pharmaceutical group.
AstraZeneca and Serum signed a new deal. Serum would produce vaccines for all poor countries eligible for assistance by Gavi, the Vaccines Alliance – an organisation backed by rich countries’ governments and the Gates Foundation. These 92 nations together counted for half the world – or nearly four billion people. India’s fair share of these vaccines, by population, should have been 35%. However there was an unwritten arrangement that Serum would earmark 50% of its supply for domestic use and 50% for export.
The deal included a clause that allowed AstraZeneca to approve exports to countries not listed in the agreement. Some countries which asked for emergency vaccine shipments from Serum, including South Africa and Brazil, were justified: they had nothing else. Rich countries like the UK and Canada, however, which had bought up more doses than required to vaccinate their people, to the detriment of everyone else, had no moral right to dip into a pool of vaccines designated for poor countries.
Paradoxically, when South Africa and India asked the World Trade Organization to temporarily waive patents and other pharmaceutical monopolies so that vaccines could be manufactured more widely to prevent shortfalls in supply, among the first countries to object were the UK, Canada and Brazil. They were the very governments that would later be asking India to solve their own shortfalls in supply.
The deal did not include restrictions on what price Serum could charge, despite AstraZeneca’s pledge to sell its vaccine for no profit “during the pandemic”, which led to Uganda, which is among the poorest countries on Earth, paying three times more than Europe for the same vaccine.
The Indian government has commandeered approval of every single Covax shipment sent out from Serum – even, according to one well-placed source within the institute, directing how many doses would be sent and when. Faced with a surge in infections, the Indian government announced an expansion of its domestic vaccination programme to include 345 million people, and halted all exports of vaccines. About 60m vaccine doses have already been dispensed, and the government needs another 630m to cover everyone in this phase alone. The bulk of India’s vaccination goals will be met by just one supplier, which faces the impossible choice of either letting down the other 91 countries depending on it, or offending its own government.
To date, 28m Covax Facility doses have been produced by Serum for the developing world – 10m of which went to India. The second largest shipment went to Nigeria, which received 4m doses, or enough to cover only 1% of its population. Given the new Indian government order of 100m doses, further supplies to countries like Nigeria may be delayed until July. And given the Indian government’s need of 500m more vaccine doses in the short run, that date could surely be pushed out even further.
This could have been avoided at every turn. Rich countries such as the UK, the US, and those of the EU, and rich organisations such as Covax should have used their funding of western pharmaceutical companies to nip vaccine monopolies in the bud.
Oxford University should have stuck to its plans of allowing anyone, anywhere, to make its vaccine.
AstraZeneca and Covax should have licensed as many manufacturers in as many countries as they could to make enough vaccines for the world.
The Indian government should have never been effectively put in charge of the well-being of every poor country on the planet.
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