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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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FOCUS: Israel-Palestine War

Americans Don't Understand Biden — And Biden Doesn't Trust Netanyahu

Challenged back home, U.S. President Joe Biden has just published an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he outlines a future for the Palestinian territories that's different from the one envisaged by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and threatens violent settlers in the West Bank with sanctions. But where are the teeth?

Photo of ​U.S. President Joe Biden walking toward the left of the image as he leaves the White House on Nov. 14

U.S. President Joe Biden leaving the White House on Nov. 14

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — Joe Biden has a problem, and then some.

The first is that a large proportion of Americans don't understand his policy of support for Israel and his refusal to call for a ceasefire. This is particularly true among young people, with 70% of 18-34 year-olds saying they disagree with the way he has been handling the conflict.

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The second problem is that the president of the United States does not trust Benjamin Netanyahu, the man leading Israel at such a crucial time. He already didn't trust him before October 7, and he is wary of his ideas for the post-war period in the Palestinian territories.

Thus unable to satisfy his opponents on the ceasefire question (he wants to give the Israeli army a chance to destroy Hamas's infrastructure in Gaza), Joe Biden has published an op-ed in the Washington Post to show his disgruntled constituents that he won't let Netanyahu dictate the agenda, and perhaps to gain time.

For the first time, the American president threatens to impose sanctions against violent settlers in the occupied West Bank. This is a new development, after years of ceremonial condemnation, to no avail, of Israel's expanding colonization efforts, often through violence.

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