Thread by @FLAHAULT

1/13 - “Many of the scientists and campaigners who helped persuade Joe Biden to back an intellectual property waiver for #COVID19 vaccines are urging the US president to go further and force vaccine makers to hand over their technology.”
ft.com/content/940822…

2/13 - “If the [US] administration wants to end the pandemic within the next 12 months, it must persuade or compel companies to share their knowhow with potential rivals in the developing world.”

3/13 - “The waiver was a huge step, but technology transfer needs to be next,” said Zain Rizvi, from one of the groups which led the campaign in favour of an IP waiver for vaccines. “The president needs to deploy all the authority and force of his position to make this happen.”

4/13 - “Asia Russell, from Health Gap, one of the global health org the Biden administration consulted in its decision to back the IP waiver, said: “We’re not going to get this by asking pharma nicely. We have to compel companies to share their technology, we have to mandate it.”

5/13-“The WHO last yr set up a fund called Covax, under which richer countries fund poorer ones to pay for doses of vaccines. But vaccine doses are in limited supply across the world, and many HICs secured supplies early on by paying billions of $ to help with their development.”

6/13 - “While the US has fully vaccinated 36 per cent of its population, India, which has been devastated by the recent wave of infections, has only vaccinated 2.8 per cent.”

7/13 - “Scientists say the divide poses not only a moral problem, but a public health one if the virus is allowed to mutate and become vaccine resistant in unvaccinated parts of the world and then spread elsewhere.”

8/13 - “Amy Kapczynski, co-director of the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale Law School, said: “We have to get as many people vaccinated as we can, as quickly as possible. [To stand] up production in the short term, technology transfer is essential.”

9/13 - “One possibility is that the president could use his powers under the Korean war-era Defense Production Act to seize companies’ technology on the government’s behalf and then share that with other countries.”

10/13 - “Another is that the government could use its own patents to force vaccine makers’ hands. Moderna in particular has used a patent in its vaccine without a licence from the National Institutes of Health, which invented that piece of technology.”

11/13 - “Alternatively, the administration could set up an organisation to act as a third-party broker negotiating technology transfer deals on behalf of US manufacturers.”

12/13 - “The Clinton Found plays this role with HIV drugs, and says it has helped bring down costs by 100x in certain parts of the world. The WHO has already launched a #COVID19 patent pool for companies to share their IP,and this could also prove a global tech broker if needed.”

13/13 - “Matthew Kavanagh, assistant professor of global health at Georgetown University, said: “This has happened before, so there is no reason it cannot happen again. Companies need to say to the government: ‘Here is our technology, you find the folks to make it.”