US¡¯ COVID-19 Vaccine Patent Waiver Will Allow India To Make Vaccines Faster

After pressure from Democratic lawmakers, nations and organizations, US President Joe Biden finally announced his support to wave intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines.

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Biden¡¯s support for a waiver is a drastic flip from his previous position. This announcement was made by the US¡¯s top trade negotiator, Katherine Tai who was backing the negotiations at the World Trade Organization.

Tai said in a statement, ¡°This is a global health crisis and the extraordinary circumstances of COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures. The Administration believes strongly in the intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines.¡±

¡°We will actively participate in text-based negotiations at the World Trade Organisation needed to make that happen. Those negotiations will take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issue involved.¡±

Tai added, ¡°The Administration¡¯s aim is to get as many safe and effective vaccines to as many people as fast as possible. As our vaccine supply for the American people is secured, the Administration will continue to ramp up its efforts -- working with the private sector and all possible partners -- to expand vaccine manufacturing and distribution. It will also work to increase the raw materials needed to produce those vaccines.¡±

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What does this mean?

As of now, only drug companies that own patents for the vaccines are authorised to manufacture them. With the patent waiver, the secret recipes will be open to all and won¡¯t be restricted to an embargo.

This would allow any company that has the skills and resources to make the vaccine to produce them and sell at the prices they want, resulting in more affordable and generic variants of those vaccines.

How can this help India scale up vaccine production?

Today, the only vaccines that are manufactured in India are Covishield (AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine) at the Serum Institute and Covaxin at Bharat Biotech. With the release of patents, more pharmaceutical companies in India could replicate and produce vaccines for India. We could get access to Pfizer, Moderna and even the single-dose Jansen vaccine by Johnson & Johnson.

This will allow not just to make vaccines more affordable but also deal with the global shortage of vaccines as more and more companies would be up for manufacturing them, giving more options to citizens to safeguard themselves from the novel coronavirus.

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So when can this start?

Here¡¯s where this gets tricky. As of now, the US has just agreed to waive the intellectual property of the COVID-19 vaccines. And while it¡¯s a huge step, there are other nations like European Union and Switzerland who haven¡¯t yet joined this motion.

A consensus of 164 members of the World Trade Organisation will have to agree to this and hammer out a waiver plan. Only with the consensus of all of 164 nations can this waiver come into effect. And this could take time.