A people’s vaccine

The latter half of November brought hope for a world facing the unprecedented public health challenge of the Covid-19 pandemic. Three pharmaceutical companies announced the results of their vaccine trials with a successful rate of over 90 percent. The UK was the first country to approve and administer the Pfizer /BioNTech vaccine. Soon after, American regulators also cleared this vaccine.

Two other potential vaccines, from Moderna and Oxford in partnership with AstraZeneca, are expected to submit and get regulatory approval soon. Rapid scientific advancement has made it possible to protect people from the pandemic through a vaccine in less than a year.

However, not everybody in the world will have an equal chance to get vaccinated soon. Rich countries where these pharmaceutical companies are based have pre-ordered and stockpiled all the vaccines. All of Moderna’s doses and 96 percent of Pfizer/BioNTech’s doses have been acquired by rich countries.

There is hardly any vaccine left for developing countries, while wealthier nations have bought up enough doses to vaccinate their entire populations nearly three times over by the end of 2021 if those currently in clinical trials are all approved for use. Data shows that rich nations – representing just 14 percent of the world’s population – have bought up 53 percent of all the most promising vaccines so far.

Nearly 70 poor countries including Pakistan will only be able to vaccinate one in ten people against Covid-19 in 2021. No doubt some of the richest people in Pakistan will find a way to get the vaccine, as in other developing countries. Yet this indicates a highly unequal system among countries and within countries.

In contrast, Oxford/AstraZeneca has pledged to provide 64 percent of their doses to people in developing nations. Yet, despite their actions to scale up supply, they can still only reach 18 percent of the world’s population next year at most.

In this unequal world, with a broken corporate model based on naked profit over people, monopoly over public health and political power – and not need – will decide who gets the vaccine. There is a WHO-led equitable vaccine allocation framework, which ensures that every country has enough vaccines to vaccinate its key workers and other vulnerable groups on priority basis. Woefully, this is being completely ignored as rich nations rush to stockpile vaccines to vaccinate every single one of their citizens many times over.

The rich countries buying up all the supplies of available vaccine is a symptom of the larger structural challenge of a profiteering capitalism led unequal economic and political system with more power to multinational corporations, and failure of the fair global governance system. This deeply broken system relies on pharmaceutical corporations for global health, despite knowing that it has consistently pursued profit over providing cheap drugs – leaving millions of poor people in developing countries to either die or suffer from prolonged illness due to the inability to afford costly drugs. The coronavirus pandemic provided an opportunity to fix this system, but once again rich nations are failing to build a better future.

It is an approach that puts the profit, intellectual property and monopoly of pharmaceutical corporations ahead of supplying enough cheap and effective vaccines for the world. It is artificially rationing supply, and this in turn will cost lives. Our best chance of all staying safe from Covid-19 is to have vaccines, diagnostics and treatments that are available for all, set free from monopolies. A People's Vaccine, not a profit vaccine.

Powerful pharmaceutical companies are non-transparent and making secret deals for high prices of vaccine doses which in many cases are higher than the per capita annual health expenditure in many developing countries. It is estimated that Pfizer’s vaccine costs $40 dollars per person and Moderna’s vaccine may even cost more.

So, the year 2021 looks bleak for the majority of the poor nations struggling to get protection from Covid-19 and return to normal life – unless urgent action is taken by governments and the pharmaceutical industry to make sure enough doses are produced.

What can the rich nations and pharmaceutical companies do to ensure enough supply and equitable distribution of the vaccine? Rich nations have immense leverage over these vaccine producers due to financial and political muscle. The firms are based in their countries. They can use this leverage to break the fossilised system of secrecy, profit and patent which can then lead to adequate manufacturing of the vaccine.

Governments all around the world need to cooperate and ensure that Covid-19 vaccines are made a global public good – free of charge, fairly distributed and based on need. A first step would be to support South Africa and India’s proposal to the World Trade Organisation Council to waive intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines, tests and treatments until everyone is protected.

All pharmaceutical corporations working on Covid-19 vaccines must share their technology and intellectual property through the World Health Organization Covid-19 Technology Access Pool, so that billions more doses can be manufactured, and safe and effective vaccines can be available to all who need them.

The writer is an Islamabad-based environmental and human rights activist.