PARIS (AP) \u2014 In an industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of Bangladesh\u2019s largest city lies a factory with gleaming new equipment imported from Germany, its immaculate hallways lined with hermetically sealed rooms. It is operating at just a quarter of its capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is one of three factories that The Associated Press found on three continents whose owners say they could start producing hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccines on short notice if only they had the blueprints and technical know-how. But that knowledge belongs to the large pharmaceutical companies who have produced the first three vaccines authorized by countries including Britain, the European Union and the U.S. \u2014 Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. The factories are all still awaiting responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Across Africa and Southeast Asia, governments and aid groups, as well as the World Health Organization, are calling on pharmaceutical companies to share their patent information more broadly to meet a\u00a0yawning global shortfall\u00a0in a pandemic that already has claimed over\u00a02.5 million lives. Pharmaceutical companies that took taxpayer money from the U.S. or Europe to develop inoculations at unprecedented speed say they are negotiating contracts and exclusive licensing deals with producers on a case-by-case basis because they need to protect their intellectual property and ensure safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Critics say this piecemeal approach is too slow at a time of urgent need to stop the virus before it mutates into even deadlier forms. WHO called for vaccine manufacturers to share their know-how to \u201cdramatically increase the global supply.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf that can be done, then immediately overnight every continent will have dozens of companies who would be able to produce these vaccines,\u201d said Abdul Muktadir, whose Incepta plant in Bangladesh already makes vaccines against hepatitis, flu, meningitis, rabies, tetanus and measles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All over the world, the supply of coronavirus vaccines is falling far short of demand, and the\u00a0limited amount available\u00a0is going to rich countries. Nearly 80% of the vaccines so far have been administered in just 10 countries, according to WHO. More than 210 countries and territories with 2.5 billion people hadn\u2019t received a single shot as of last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The deal-by-deal approach also means that\u00a0some poorer countries end up paying more\u00a0for the same vaccine than richer countries. South Africa, Mexico, Brazil and Uganda all pay different amounts per dose for the AstraZeneca vaccine \u2014 and more than governments in the European Union, according to studies and publicly available documents. AstraZeneca said the price of the vaccine will differ depending on local production costs and how much countries order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat we see today is a stampede, a survival of the fittest approach, where those with the deepest pockets, with the sharpest elbows are grabbing what is there and leaving others to die,\u201d said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In South Africa, home to the world\u2019s\u00a0most worrisome COVID-19 variant, the Biovac factory has said for weeks that it\u2019s in negotiations with an unnamed manufacturer with no contract to show for it. And in Denmark, the Bavarian Nordic factory has capacity to spare and the ability to make more than 200 million doses but is also waiting for word from the producer of a licensed coronavirus vaccine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Governments and health experts offer two potential solutions to the vaccine shortage: One, supported by WHO, is a patent pool modeled after a platform set up for HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis treatments for voluntary sharing of technology, intellectual property and data. But no company has offered to share its data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other,\u00a0a proposal to suspend intellectual property rights\u00a0during the pandemic, has been blocked in the World Trade Organization by the United States and Europe, home to the companies responsible for creating coronavirus vaccines. That drive has the support of at least 119 countries and the African Union but is adamantly opposed by vaccine makers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pharmaceutical companies say instead of lifting IP restrictions,\u00a0rich countries should simply give more vaccines to poorer countries\u00a0through\u00a0COVAX, the public-private initiative WHO helped create for more equitable vaccine distribution. The organization and its partners\u00a0delivered its first doses last week\u00a0in very limited quantities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But rich countries are not willing to give up what they have. Ursula Von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, has used the phrase \u201cglobal common good\u201d to describe the vaccines but the\u00a0European Union imposed export controls\u00a0on vaccines, giving countries the power to stop shots from leaving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On her first day as director-general of the WTO, Nigeria\u2019s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the time had come to shift attention to the vaccination needs of the world\u2019s poor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe must focus on working with companies to open up and license more viable manufacturing sites now in emerging markets and developing countries,\u201d she told the organization\u2019s members. \u201cThis should happen soon so we can save lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The long-held model in the pharmaceutical industry is that companies pour in huge amounts of money and research in return for the right to reap profits from their drugs and vaccines. Last May, Pfizer\u2019s CEO Albert Bourla described the idea of sharing IP rights widely as \u201cnonsense\u201d and even \u201cdangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thomas Cueni, director general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, called the idea of lifting patent protections \u201ca very bad signal to the future. You signal that if you have a pandemic, your patents are not worth anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Advocates of sharing vaccine blueprints argue that, unlike with most drugs, taxpayers paid billions to develop vaccines that could help end the world\u2019s biggest public health emergency in living memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPeople are literally dying because we cannot agree on intellectual property rights,\u201d said Mustaqeem De Gama, a South African diplomat involved in the WTO discussions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul Fehlner, the chief legal officer for biotech company Axcella and a supporter of the WHO patent pool board, said governments that poured billions of dollars into developing vaccines and treatments should have demanded more from the companies they were financing from the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA condition of taking taxpayer money is not treating them as dupes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last month, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading pandemic expert in the United States, said all options need to be on the table, including improving production capacity in the developing world and working with pharmaceuticals to relax their patents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRich countries, ourselves included, have a moral responsibility when you have a global outbreak like this,\u201d Fauci said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to get the entire world vaccinated, not just our own country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s hard to know exactly\u00a0how much more vaccine\u00a0could be made worldwide if intellectual property restrictions were lifted. But Suhaib Siddiqi, former director of chemistry at Moderna, said with the blueprint and technical advice, a modern factory should be able to get vaccine production going in at most three to four months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn my opinion, the vaccine belongs to the public,\u201d said Siddiqi. \u201cAny company which has experience synthesizing molecules should be able to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back in Bangladesh, the Incepta factory tried to get what it needed to make more vaccines in two ways, by offering its production lines to Moderna and by reaching out to a WHO partner. Moderna did not respond to requests for comment about the Bangladesh plant, but its CEO, St\u00e9phane Bancel, told European lawmakers the company\u2019s engineers were fully occupied on expanding production in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDoing more tech transfer right now could actually put the production and the increased output for the months to come at great risk,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are very open to do it in the future once our current sites are running.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Muktadir said he fully appreciates the extraordinary scientific achievement involved in the creation of vaccines this year, wants the rest of the world to be able to share in it, and is willing to pay a fair price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNobody should give their property just for nothing,\u201d he said. \u201cA vaccine could be made accessible to people \u2014 high quality, effective vaccines.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
___<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maria Cheng reported from Toronto. Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, Al-Emrun Garjon in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Andrew Meldrum in Johannesburg, South Africa, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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