{"id":181445,"date":"2021-03-22T12:00:48","date_gmt":"2021-03-22T12:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=181445"},"modified":"2021-03-22T05:52:36","modified_gmt":"2021-03-22T05:52:36","slug":"rich-countries-signed-away-a-chance-to-vaccinate-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/03\/rich-countries-signed-away-a-chance-to-vaccinate-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Rich Countries Signed Away a Chance to Vaccinate the World"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Despite warnings, American and European officials gave up leverage that could have guaranteed access for billions of people. That risks prolonging the pandemic.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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A protest in Johannesburg last week demanding that companies share vaccine technology and calling for governments to suspend Covid-19 vaccine patent rules. Joao Silva\/The New York Times<\/p><\/div>\n

21 Mar 2021 – <\/em>In the coming days, a patent will finally be issued on a five-year-old invention, a feat of molecular engineering that is at the heart of at least five major Covid-19 vaccines. And the United States government will control that patent.<\/p>\n

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The new patent presents an opportunity \u2014 and some argue the last best chance \u2014 to exact leverage over the drug companies producing the vaccines and pressure them to expand access to less affluent countries.<\/p>\n

The question is whether the government will do anything at all.<\/p>\n

The rapid development of Covid-19 vaccines, achieved at record speed and financed by massive public funding in the United States, the European Union and Britain, represents a great triumph of the pandemic. Governments partnered with drugmakers, pouring in billions of dollars to procure raw materials, finance clinical trials and retrofit factories. Billions more were committed to buy the finished product.<\/p>\n

But this Western success has created stark inequity. Residents of wealthy and middle-income countries have received about 90 percent of the nearly 400 million vaccines delivered so far<\/a>. Under current projections, many of the rest will have to wait years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n