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Coronavirus

Lift The Patents, Round 2: Omicron Proves Current Vaccine System Won't Work

Germany boasted recently that it donated 100 million vaccines to poor countries, but this approach will simply not work to halt the pandemic from spreading again and again. Calls for the mRNA vaccines’ patents to be lifted are growing louder.

 senior citizen is being administered with a third booster dose ''precautionary dose'' of coronavirus vaccine at Madhyamgram Rural Hospital

Booster doses for Frontline workers, Seniors and Healthcare workers begins in India

Jan Klauth
-Analysis-
BERLIN — Positive headlines about the pandemic are thin on the ground at the moment, so the latest announcement from the German government was welcome news: the country has donated 103 million vaccine doses to more than 30 countries – three million more than planned.

Only the U.S. has donated more – 364 million vaccines. Germany’s Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development Svenja Schulze’s pride in the achievement was clear when she announced the numbers, with plans to donate around 75 million of the 338 million vaccines the German government has ordered.

Still Professor Anna Holzscheiter, an expert in global health policy at Dresden University of Technology, says Germany, and the rest of the West, have little to be proud about. “The distribution of vaccines across the world is still grossly unfair," she said. "The pandemic will only be over when it is over everywhere. We need a new strategy in 2022.”


A year on from the development of the first vaccines, the situation is sobering. The Covax initiative set up by the World Health Organization (WHO), among others, in an attempt to make global access to vaccines fairer, has fallen far short of its aims. In autumn it halved its initial goal of donating 2 billion vaccines by the end of the year, and by the end of December, only around 730 million had arrived in target countries.

Risk of a never-ending cycle of pandemics

While in many Western countries, a large proportion of the population has already received three vaccines and governments are even considering the merits of a fourth dose, more than 40 poorer countries have vaccination rates in the single figures. Many of these countries haven’t even yet managed to vaccinate health workers or high-risk groups.

“The world risks getting stuck in a never-ending cycle of pandemics, with new variants cropping up again and again,” says Holzscheiter.

global demand is rising sharply

She says there are two important steps we must take: sharing knowledge and technology across the world and temporarily lifting the patent on COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.

There have been calls to lift the patent from the moment the vaccines were developed. But Omicron has ignited the debate again, with countries such as India and South Africa calling for the patent to be lifted so that the vaccines can be manufactured elsewhere in the world and poorer countries will no longer be dependent on donated vaccines, which sometimes only reach the country shortly before their expiration date.

Boosters multiply demand

“It’s not about taking the vaccine away from the companies that developed it,” says Holzscheiter. “The argument that lifting the patent wouldn’t necessarily result in higher production has already been disproven.” She says a report by Human Rights Watch has shown that more than 100 companies outside of Europe and North America would be capable of manufacturing the mRNA vaccines on a large scale, including eight in Africa.

In 2021, around 11 billion vaccines were produced across all manufacturers, and in 2022 that number may well rise. “The argument is that enough vaccines are being produced, and that they simply need to be shared out — but that simply isn’t true,” says Elisabeth Massute from Doctors Without Borders, arguing that this estimation was based on the assumption that people would only need two doses each. “With boosters and the possibility of targeted vaccines against new variants, global demand is rising sharply."

It also seems that the Chinese vaccine, which billions of people have received, is significantly less effective against Omicron. This means that the mRNA vaccines produced by BioNTech and Moderna are even more important than before.

But those companies have their own plans to combat the shortage, especially in Africa. Instead of lifting the patents, they want to produce the vaccine locally themselves, for example in Rwanda, where BioNTech plans to manufacture 50 million doses in 2022.

In the long term, this capacity could rise to “hundreds of millions of doses”. That is the plan, at least. But it’s not clear when the first doses will be ready, and the companies did not respond to our requests for comment.

Researcher Emile Hendricks works in Afrigen's analytical laboratory.

Africa produces off-patent Corona vaccine

Kristin Palitza/dpa/ZUMA

Not an easy way out

Until vaccines can be manufactured locally, the whole African continent will remain dependent on donations. That means many vaccine doses are being destroyed – most recently, more than a million doses of AstraZeneca in Nigeria, because they didn’t reach the country until shortly before their expiration date.

“The vaccine donations often come at short notice and are unreliable," Massute says. "Many poorer countries are not going to invest millions in a vaccination program if they’re not sure when they’ll receive the vaccines, or how many doses they’ll get.”

Manufacturers should assume liability for their own products.

She says that, where necessary, richer countries should offer financial, technical and logistical support. Another problem is widespread vaccine hesitancy in some countries.

What complicates the situation further is that donations of the BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have to first be approved by the manufacturer, as they want to minimize their liability in the target countries. It’s not clear what exact risk they’re looking to protect themselves against.

The EU is keeping the contracts under lock and key, and neither BioNTech nor Moderna will answer questions. Massute concludes: “Given the massive amount of data available from numerous studies, which show the vaccines are safe, it makes no sense for the manufacturers not to assume liability for their own products.”


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Future

Livestream Shopping Is Huge In China — Will It Fly Elsewhere?

Streaming video channels of people shopping has been booming in China, and is beginning to win over customers abroad as a cheap and cheerful way of selling products to millions of consumers glued to the screen.

A A female volunteer promotes spring tea products via on-line live streaming on a pretty mountain surrounded by tea plants.

In Beijing, selling spring tea products via on-line live streaming.

Xinhua / ZUMA
Gwendolyn Ledger

SANTIAGOTikTok, owned by Chinese tech firm ByteDance, has spent more than $500 million to break into online retailing. The app, best known for its short, comical videos, launched TikTok Shop in August, aiming to sell Chinese products in the U.S. and compete with other Chinese firms like Shein and Temu.

Tik Tok Shop will have three sections, including a live or livestream shopping channel, allowing users to buy while watching influencers promote a product.

This choice was strategic: in the past year, live shopping has become a significant trend in online retailing both in the U.S. and Latin America. While still an evolving technology, in principle, it promises good returns and lower costs.

Chilean Carlos O'Rian Herrera, co-founder of Fira Onlive, an online sales consultancy, told América Economía that live shopping has a much higher catchment rate than standard website retailing. If traditional e-commerce has a rate of one or two purchases per 100 visits to your site, live shopping can hike the ratio to 19%.

Live shopping has thrived in China and the recent purchases of shopping platforms in some Latin American countries suggests firms are taking an interest. In the United States, live shopping generated some $20 billion in sales revenues in 2022, according to consultants McKinsey. This constituted 2% of all online sales, but the firm believes the ratio may become 20% by 2026.

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