COVID-19 Vacunas: Es la política...? (II) Internacionalismo

 

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COVID-19 Vacunas: Es la política...? (I) Nacionalismo

Internationalism

Economic interdependence

Nationalism does not characterize the efforts to create and distribute a vaccine in their totality. Internationalist sentiment can also be found, such as in the early days of the coronavirus, when the EU donated protective equipment to China, and later on, when China did the same for Italy. These displays of international cooperation and solidarity can be taken as evidence for a more liberal or idealist conception of international relations: not only is cooperation possible between countries; in cases such as a global pandemic, it is arguably necessary. It is rare that a country can isolate itself from the effects of the pandemic taking place in the rest of the world, as Australia and New Zealand have done. Ultimately, the fact that there is a global movement of people and products means that a country that is especially suffering from the coronavirus cannot just be left to fend for itself. This can be seen in the Kent lorry crisis, this December, which occurred at the border of the UK and France upon the announcement of the emergence of a new strain of COVID. However, it is not only the virus that can seep into a country. Given that countries are not self-sufficient, economically, and in terms of national production, a necessary corollary of international trade is that if a trade partner’s economy and production are stunted from the effects of the pandemic, it is likely this will have an adverse impact on your country too. The RAND corporation has found that vaccine nationalism can actually harm rather than benefit the countries in question: high-income countries such as the UK and the US stand to lose $119 billion per annum if less affluent countries do not promptly receive a sufficient share of the vaccines. It would only cost $25 billion to do so, thus yielding an overwhelming net gain.

Developing Countries

Economic vulnerability

Lockdowns around the world are expected to result in “the worst economic downturn since the great depression”. 

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are offering billions in financial aid to countries struck by COVID, which, in less economically developed countries, can have the crucial effect of limiting the risk of civil conflict, which is observed to result from negative exogenous fiscal shocks. This is a problem that is not often included in western calculi of the impacts of the coronavirus. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres claims that these economic effects will spillover and undermine responses to the pandemic: “most African countries lack the financing to adequately respond to the crisis, due in part to declining demand and prices of their commodity exports.”

Vulnerability to the health crisis and “guinea pigs” for vaccine testing

The experience of the pandemic has been generally different in the Global South compared to the Global North which dominate news and discourses on COVID. Nepal has less than 500 intensive care unit beds in the entire country, despite a population 28-million-strong. This is a problem that threatened even developed countries like Italy. Brazil is one of the countries most affected by the virus, following only the US and India. This is suspected to be because they lacked both the infrastructure to institute a robust testing and tracing system, as well as sufficient PPE. Political infighting and institutional incompetence have resulted in Brazil lacking a comprehensive vaccination plan.

Furthermore, significant testing for vaccines takes place in developing countries, which has often invoked an ethical debate, including criticism of individuals in these countries being used as “human guinea pigs”, with the implication that their lives are dispensable. 

The larger part of Coronavac testing is taking place in Brazil, with the New York Times calling the country the “ideal vaccine laboratory”. 

These attitudes are residual from imperial narratives about the “family of civilised nations”, with those not meeting the “standard of civilisation” being barbaric; read: subhuman. These narratives can subconsciously spillover into real-life policies regarding global vaccine distribution, risking a status quo wherein wealthy states are able to hoard vaccines while countries in the Global South are left waiting and wanting. With a global pandemic, time translates directly into human lives: the passage of a single minute signifies another death in the US alone.

However, wealth and health have long been conflated. The endemic problem of diseases in developing countries remaining untreated despite the availability of treatment is omnipresent, even prior to the coronavirus. In 2015, 1.6 million people in African countries died of diseases such as HIV-related illnesses, malaria, and tuberculosis. Such deaths can be prevented through existing medicines, however, due to lack of funds, these countries lack the medicines to deal with health crises that developing countries have already overcome.

 

COVAX and the EU

Ver COVAX en PHARMACOSERÍAS 

The COVAX facility is the response of higher-income countries to this question; an effort to make the global distribution of vaccines more equitable. This sentiment is echoed by Guterres, who requested that the vaccine be treated as a “global public good” as opposed to “private commodities that widen inequalities,” per WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. 

COVAX is a strong example of international cooperation: it is spearheaded by international non-governmental organisations such as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the World Health Organization (WHO), and the European Commission. 172 economies are now engaged in discussions to potentially participate in COVAX, with 80 of these being self-financing countries which will be providing support to the 92 countries eligible to be supported by this programme. The aim of COVAX is to “discourage national governments from hoarding COVID-19 vaccines and to focus on first vaccinating the most high-risk people in every country” by “lower[ing] vaccine costs for everyone”. Dr Ghebreyesus has cited COVAX as being a direct response to vaccine nationalism. Only time will tell how successful the execution of this project will be. Similarly, the EU is acting in its capacity as an international organization to centralise and coordinate vaccine distribution, ensuring that “All Member States will have access to COVID-19 vaccines at the same time on the basis of the size of their population”.

However, it is crucial that nations follow through on commitments to reduce vaccine inequality. The ACT-Accelerator Programme, developed by the WHO to quickly produce and fairly distribute vaccines, makes a desperate plea on its website: “Recent contributions bring the total committed to over 5.6 billion US$ – but an additional 3.7 billion US$ is needed urgently, with a further 23.9 billion US$ required in 2021.” The swine flu outbreak of 2009 is a prime example of vaccine nationalism gone awry, where developed countries hoarded large quantities of the vaccine in the early days, requiring the WHO to coordinate donations of 10% of the vaccine supplies of nine of these countries. However, even in this case, international cooperation was used to mitigate this issue.

 

Conclusion

Ultimately, however self-explanatory and simplistic such a claim may be, global cooperation is necessary when dealing with a global crisis. There is little room for nationalism, and little to be gained from a policy of “each man for himself”. 

The vaccine and the coronavirus, inextricably interlinked, have become channels through which national political interests can be realised, a new, shiny tool in the arsenal and war-chests of governments to wield power and gain political capital. There is something morally disquieting in extracting political gain from a tragedy that has robbed people of their lives, their jobs, and their livelihoods. However, it would not be the first time that death on a large scale has been politicised. An obvious analogy to this is war, yet it is also a non-comparative one; war is inherently political and nationalist, constituted of territorial disputes and invasions of countries’ borders and sovereignty. It is clear that this politicisation has negative consequences, as countries forgo correct procedures in a juvenile strife to be first, and keep vaccines to themselves, seemingly forgetting the principle of sharing. It is likely that cutting through (sometimes necessary) red tape would have occurred in any case, as doctors, biotech companies, and governments alike are doing everything in their respective powers to fasten the proverbial tourniquet and finally cease this incessant haemorrhaging. Hopefully, international cooperation will come to fruition, and the coronavirus can be tackled in one, concentrated, effective effort, as opposed to differentially, with LEDCs lagging significantly behind wealthy countries in terms of access to life-saving vaccines.(Ver)

COVAX es...

 

Luis Parejo

 ¿Qué es el mecanismo Covax?

  Su nombre real es Mecanismo de Acceso Global   a las Vacunas Covid-19. 

 Es uno de los pilares del ACT-A (Acelerador del acceso a las herramientas contra el Covid-19), una colaboración mundial sin precedentes creada en abril de 2020 entre gobiernos, organizaciones sanitarias y científicos para acelerar el desarrollo, producción y acceso a las pruebas diagnósticas, los tratamientos y las vacunas contra la nueva pandemia.

¿cuál es su función?

Su objetivo principal es garantizar que cualquier persona en cualquier lugar del mundo, independientemente de su situación económica, pueda recibir gratuitamente su vacuna contra el coronavirus.

¿qué países aportan dosis de vacunas?

Son alrededor de 70 países, entre los que se encuentran toda la Unión Europea, Canadá, Sudáfrica o China. En un primer momento, Estados Unidos descartó unirse al fondo Covax, pero se sumó tras la llegada de Biden a la Casa Blanca. Rusia, que inicialmente se había mantenido al margen, pidió unirse en marzo.

¿qué países se benefician de Covax?

Más de 100 países, entre los que se encuentran Costa de Marfil, Ruanda, Bolivia, Camerún o Nicaragua.

El reparto de dosis de vacunas contra el Covid-19 empezó en febrero, y el primer país en beneficiarse fue Ghana, que recibió 600.000 vacunas. En las semanas siguientes continuó y continúa un reparto sin descanso por más de 100 países, sumando actualmente más de 70 millones de dosis de vacunas repartidas.

¿por qué es esencial?

Porque, como su propio lema dice, «nadie estará a salvo hasta que todos estemos a salvo». Y no es una simple frase bonita, es una realidad epidemiológica. Si los ciudadanos de los países más ricos somos los únicos que tenemos acceso a las vacunas contra el Covid-19, se producirá un efecto dominó global a nivel sanitario y económico desde los países con menos recursos hacia el resto del mundo. En esas regiones incubarán fácilmente nuevas variantes del coronavirus que terminarían llegando a los países ricos, y ante las que nuestras vacunas sean ineficaces… por lo que podríamos volver de nuevo a la casilla de salida de la pandemia. 

Covax, la solidaridad en las vacunas

Una iniciativa pretende garantizar el acceso rápido, justo y equitativo a las vacunas contra el Covid, facilitando dosis a los países con menos recursos, que no podrían pagar su precio de mercado.

La carrera por la vacuna / Jorge Dezcallar Embajador de España

 

Jorge Dezcallar

Es la “Carrera por la vacuna” que derrote al covid-19 en la que las empresas farmacéuticas se juegan muchísimo dinero y en la que algunos países ponen su reputación y su imagen internacional.

En el aspecto positivo hay que destacar que nunca antes se había visto un esfuerzo como el actual tanto por el volumen del dinero invertido como por la colaboración entre empresas farmacéuticas en la búsqueda de una solución, algo que facilitan las redes sociales y en particular internet al permitir trabajar juntos a centenares de científicos de muchos países. Y es precisamente eso lo revolucionario del presente esfuerzo que puede conducir a que dispongamos de una o, más probablemente, varias vacunas en un plazo breve de tiempo cuando lo habitual exigía unos quince años entre investigaciones y pruebas. Eliminar barreras de propiedad intelectual o de transferencia de tecnología facilitaría mucho esta labor.

 

Los chinos dicen que su investigación está muy avanzada en tres vacunas al menos, y Putin afirma que la suya es ya una realidad y para que no haya dudas de sus intenciones la llama “Sputnik V” en recuerdo de Yuri Gagarin, que venció a los norteamericanos en la carrera espacial. Son como niños. La universidad de Oxford también está en liza, como queriendo desmentir que el Brexit desnudará al Reino Unido como la potencia menor que es. 

 

Y Donald Trump presiona a los laboratorios para que la vacuna norteamericana se anuncie antes de las elecciones del 3 de noviembre. Para eso ha repartido 10.000 millones de dólares como parte de la operación “Warp speed” (velocidad de la luz) cuyo nombre ya lo dice todo. Trump quiere utilizar la vacuna como baza electoral y por eso varios laboratorios han suscrito una especie de código ético por el que se comprometen a no quemar etapas y a no ceder ante las presiones políticas. Pero me temo que otros cederán. Sea como fuere, americanos, chinos y rusos invierten su prestigio en ser los primeros en dar con la ansiada vacuna para ponerse la correspondiente medalla. Aquí el riesgo es que con las prisas nos den gato por liebre.

En esta batalla encarnizada no podían faltar los espías. Los norteamericanos, con carita de no haber roto nunca un plato, ya han desvelado intentos chinos, rusos e incluso iraníes (siempre viene bien ponerlos a parir) por hacerse con los avances de sus investigaciones, y lo mismo denuncian los británicos, que han detectado intentos de hackeo en AstraZeneca, una compañía vinculada a la universidad de Oxford que ha tenido que suspender temporalmente las pruebas en curso al detectar efectos secundarios. Los norteamericanos dicen que también han percibido intentos de hackeo sobre las empresas Gilead Sciences, Novavax* y Moderna y por eso, porque las espiaba, Washington cerró el consulado general de China en Houston. Como sus sistemas de defensa cibernética están siendo reforzados, los ataques se concentran ahora en las universidades cuyos ordenadores están menos protegidos. Como los de la universidad de North Carolina, que ya ha denunciado varios ataques chinos y rusos, estos últimos a cargo de Cozy Bear, un grupo de hackers que ya estuvieron involucrados en los ataques cibernéticos contra el sistema electoral norteamericano en 2016. En otros casos la labor de los espías se concentra en la desinformación, en sembrar dudas sobre el origen y los avances de la pandemia, en descalificar los progresos y en exagerar los fallos cometidos al combatirla. En realidad los fracasos son tan clamorosos que no necesitan que nadie los jalee.

(*) How Novavax Is Keeping up With the Big Players in the Coronavirus Vaccine Race

Yo creo que ganar dinero con esta vacuna es inmoral. Como lo es que los países ricos se la quieran guardar para ellos. Al parecer un puñado de países adinerados ya ha reservado los primeros 4.000 millones de dosis de varias vacunas en experimentación. Por eso aplaudo al Serum Institute de India que ha renunciado con generosidad a la propiedad intelectual de la vacuna que está experimentando. La Humanidad se enfrenta a un reto colectivo y por eso creo que la vacuna debería ser casi gratis (los que la hagan ganarán muchísimo dinero vendiendo miles de millones de dosis), y que debería ponerse primero al alcance de los más vulnerables en todo el mundo y no sólo en los más ricos. Aquí de lo que se trata es de derrotar al virus y para eso hay que saber que nadie estará seguro hasta que todos lo estemos. En este barco vamos todos… aunque también sería ingenuo desconocer que unos viajan en primera clase, otros en preferente y otros en turista y que siempre hay más botes de salvamento en la zona de los pasajeros con tarjeta de platino.

 

COVAX

Para asegurar una distribución equitativa de la vacuna hay algunos esfuerzos en marcha como la iniciativa “Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility” (COVAX) respaldada por la OMS, la Unión Europea, Japón, Canadá, India, y otros (pero no por EEUU ni por Rusia, y por China sólo con la boca chica). Este proyecto pretende reunir 18.000 millones de dólares para reservar millones de dosis de una docena de vacunas en experimentación y garantizar así que los más vulnerables de todo el mundo tengan acceso preferente. Veremos, porque tengo muchas dudas. 

La carrera continúa.

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COVID-19 Vacunas: Es la política...? (I) Nacionalismo

 

Vaccine Politics: global inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic

By Fonie Mitsopoulou -24.2.2021 

Nothing can be of national or international importance without being imbued with the edge of politics. An event as impactful as the pandemic, which has afflicted an estimated 81.5 million, and led to 1.78 million deaths to date, was always going to be politicized; leveraged for gain, superiority, and influence over other countries. The war against the virus comes hand-in-hand with an international propaganda war.

In the case of the pandemic, wealthy and powerful countries like the United Kingdom, the United States, Russia and China are able to use the virus for political gain. Vaccine nationalism is employed to gain influence and wield power among their national populations, as well as against other countries, while vaccine diplomacy is used to mend coronavirus-induced tensions and to curry favour among potential allies.

Less developed countries face a different set of problems, wherein their vulnerability to economic downturns caused by lockdowns around the world, and their lack of an infrastructure to deal with such a health crisis were already threats to their populations. This is exacerbated through phenomena such as vaccine hoarding, wherein only the wealthiest of countries reserve the bulk of the life-saving vaccines being produced. Internationalist movements such as COVAX are attempts at reducing global inequalities in terms of access to these vaccines. Hence, nationalist and internationalist approaches to the pandemic coexist in a world where a deadly threat provides new opportunities for actions to be taken on the political stage.

Ver:

 COVAX en PHARMACOSERÍAS

 

Nationalism

A resurgence in nationalism can be seen recently in trends in Europe, the US, and other countries worldwide, notably rising in association with and concurrent to right-wing parties and leaders. Nationalism is the sentiment of one’s country being superior to others, with their interests deserving to come before those of others. From Germany’s AfD, to Spain’s VOX, to America’s President Trump’s “America First” mantra, perhaps the rise in political nationalism primed the world for vaccine nationalism.

The two main culprits of nationalist behaviour are the US and the UK. These are two of the countries most affected by COVID-19, but counterintuitively so. They are relatively sufficiently developed, wealthy, and have the organisational capacity to have confronted the pandemic in a way which would have mitigated its subsequent overwhelming spread. Yet, even the leaders- the global representatives- of both of these countries fell to the coronavirus, in a stroke of irony that was not lost on anyone. The UK and the US still made sure to manipulate the events of the pandemic for political gain.

The most glaring case of “vaccine nationalism” is exemplified in the race for the vaccine, as countries raced to be the first on the moon five decades back, and as they scrambled to snatch up regions in Africa at the turn of the century. It is not a novel phenomenon; he who gets there first is able to laud it over the others. It is a source of national pride. Being the first, the biggest, the best, has always been the aim of governments in competition both domestically, with other parties, and internationally, with other states. This has often manifested itself through proxy competitions, seemingly unrelated to a state’s political strength. Nationalist competition can even be found in sports, as, during times of heightened political tensions, countries vie for first place. This was the case in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, with national athletes acting as vehicles for their governments as countries tried to prove national supremacy in the lead-up to a World War.

Furthermore, vaccine nationalism is not just reflected in attempts to produce or approve a vaccine first, but more importantly, it is fundamentally about which country is able to provide for its citizens by securing sufficient doses of the vaccine so as to halt the rising death toll. According to the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, higher income countries had collectively reserved nearly 5 billion vaccine doses by the 8th of December through bilateral “advance market commitments”. The US has entered into six of these deals, thus securing more than 1 billion doses, a surplus of vaccines to ensure that if any of the trials fail, the other trials can offer them some security. However, the problem this poses is that vaccine production cannot keep up with global demand, therefore, for some years, many less-wealthy countries will be bereft of vaccines while the coronavirus continues to spread. From a scientific perspective, the global dissemination of COVID will be tackled most effectively if vaccines are distributed equitably, so that all countries can inoculate populations so as to achieve some degree of herd immunity while vaccines continue to be produced. A nationalist stance, therefore, will only prove to be deleterious in time.

UK

Expressions of vaccine nationalism

With two American companies (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna) and an English one (AstraZeneca, in collaboration with the University of Oxford) in the lead, this particular race has always been intolerably tight. Even though Pfizer was able to get approved by the UK, the EU, and the US, in a similar timeframe, the UK could still take pride in being the first to sign a deal with them and be the first to distribute the vaccine, thus “lead[ing] humanity’s charge against this disease”, as a tweet from Alok Sharma, Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, read. This does not go to say that the English agreed with this sentiment, as the top commenters retorted with “Lose the jingoism – it’s not even a UK vaccine” and “alternatively they’ll remember the UK having one of the worst death rates and the worst economic impact due to poor governance”. The UK was also the first country to approve the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on the 30th of December 2020, coinciding with a period which has seen daily COVID cases in the UK at an all-time high: on December 29th, there were 53,135 new cases.

Therefore, vaccine-related nationalist narratives were a tool used by the UK government to salvage some public support and credibility. The methods with which this occurred was through public statements: Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Tory MPs Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries all made the claim (on either Times Radio or Question Time) that the rapidity with which the vaccine was approved was a result of no longer being constrained by the European Medicines Agency. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has publicly stated “I just think we have the very best people in this country and we’ve got the best medical regulators. Much better than the French have, much better than the Belgians have, much better than the Americans have. That doesn’t surprise me at all, as we’re a much better country than every single one of them, aren’t we?”. The Tory government have engaged in discussions about branding vaccine kits with the Union Jack–a potent national visual symbol that makes it very obvious who the British citizens should thank. In line with such symbolism, the UK called it’s immunisation programme “V-Day”, alluding to the language used for their victory in the Second World War, thus further inciting patriotic fervour around the topic of the vaccine.

Political incentives

The current Conservative government stands to gain from setting up the quick approval of a vaccine as a metric for a successful state. This is a strategy that can be described as setting milestones at accessible points, and celebrating when they have been achieved. This is to detract from the recent highly-publicised political losses the UK government has seen, both on the domestic and international fronts. On its local stomping-ground, the Conservative party has been accused of having failed to tackle the coronavirus crisis with any semblance of competence, with charges ranging from spending extortionate amounts (£12 billion) on a sub-par Track and Trace system which yielded few returns, to discriminatory lockdown regulations being placed on northern cities such as Manchester, compared to London, with only a fraction of the financial support. The government has further come under fire for failing to address child food poverty, limiting free school meals over vacations and obligating UNICEF to provide aid for these English children for the first time, undermining the UK’s credentials as a leading developed global power. The UK appears to onlookers as though it has been overwhelmed by a global health crisis disproportionately to other- potentially less wealthy and well-equipped- countries.

Internationally, the UK was seen to be hurtling towards the 31st of December–the date of the final deadline for a Brexit deal with the EU–without a deal in sight. In the worst-case-scenario of a no-deal-Brexit, there were fears of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines being held up due to disruptions in the movement of goods between Belgium and the UK, which would be an issue given that these vaccines must be refrigerated at -70C. While the Conservative government, under Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was able to negotiate a deal at the eleventh hour, issues with trade and borders made the government appear as though they are frantically trying to make momentous, wide-reaching decisions with little time and little bargaining power.

Most significantly, in the UK, the vaccine has become yet another battleground for Brexit: a vessel for the anti- or pro-European sentiments held by nationals. Depending on who you ask, British rapid vaccine rollout is either a national triumph, resulting from Britain removing themselves from the shackles of tedious European Union bureaucracy and legislation, or, alternatively, it was only made possible through international collaboration (BioNTech is a German company, and the drug will be produced in Belgium, the home of the EU headquarters).

Implications

Attempts to import politics into the vaccine may have adverse impacts. Firstly, according to Stephen Reicher, a social psychologist at the University of St Andrews, the stance of those who are hesitant or against the vaccine is informed by mistrust of politicians, who are accused of lying about the vaccine for political or monetary gain, and such propaganda only confirms these suspicions. Furthermore, in the eyes of those who give more credence to science, these government spokespeople are exposed as either being scientifically illiterate-having very poor knowledge of how the vaccine-rollout process occurred- or being prepared to lie about it for political gain, which does not inspire particular faith in them. This can have both negative effects on attempts to finally end the pandemic, as well be counterproductive for the government, politically.

US

Vaccine hesitancy

President Trump’s methods to use the vaccine for political advantage are exemplified in his attempt, in the early days of the pandemic, to ensure that the CureVac vaccine would be “only for the USA”, in exchange for $1 billion. In an act akin to this one, the US was accused in April of diverting mask shipments meant for Germany for itself, in a scramble for scarce PPE in the midst of “mask wars”.

It is important, however, to place such actions within the context of American vaccine scepticism. All efforts to secure vaccines for the entire population are futile if the internal political implications behind the vaccine are not dispelled. This debate is wrought on a grassroots level. Within the wider conversation about whether the government and these big pharma companies are to be trusted- which has been waged on adjacent battlefields, such as that of mandatory mask-wearing and on the oppressiveness of the lockdown restrictions- the vaccine has not gotten through without intensive scrutiny. With a massive anti-vax movement having already taken root in the US, the coronavirus vaccines are treated with suspicion, especially given that vaccines are known to take up to a decade to produce. Operation Warp Speed, the name given to the US efforts to funnel billions into vaccine research and cut through red tape during this time of urgency, significantly expedited this process, thus inciting unease among sceptics. Only 60% of Americans have indicated they plan on being vaccinated, while 21% are reluctant to do so under any circumstances. Cynics wondered whether the October target for the completion of the vaccine would be rushing it unduly (and potentially dangerously) for the sake of having it out before the elections in November.

The link between the vaccine and politics is bidirectional; not only does the existence and supply of vaccines inform whether or not a government is perceived as effective or successful, but the inverse also holds true. When high-profile public figures and politicians put their weight behind the vaccine, this inspires faith in it among a dubious public. When individuals such as president-elect Joe Biden receive the vaccine on public television, this contributes towards the reduction of vaccine hesitancy. That being said, someone who is deeply convinced by the conspiracy theories is unlikely to be swayed by such a display; radical groups are always equipped with some response to rebut any information that runs counter to their beliefs.

RUSSIA

In August, the Russian government claimed to have created a successful vaccine, which, in a propagandist nod to the aforementioned space race, is called “Sputnik V’. On its website, it claims to be “the first registered vaccine against COVID-19”, establishing itself as the winner of this implicit competition. This did not go without significant resistance, however, as the US, the UK, and Canada accused Russia of sending hackers to steal vaccine information from their drug companies and research groups. Russia responded by calling this a smear campaign, attempting to undermine what could “potentially be the most effective vaccine out there”.

It must be noted that President Putin had a political incentive to make this announcement prematurely, and to have produced a vaccine first even if – by scientific standards – it was not ready (skipping Phase-3 trials, it had only been tested on 100 people). Currently, his trust ratings are experiencing one of their deepest troughs, and he just passed the constitutional amendment to presidential terms which would allow him to stay in power indefinitely. If he is to be around for a while, he has to be well-liked. It is a regime-preserving strategy, akin to those employed by other non-democratic governments. Furthermore, in an exigent parallel to the Cold War, this can be perceived as a move for Russia to stake itself as an alternative pole of power, to carve out its own sphere of influence in a competition that so far has been dominated by Western countries. The fact that the vaccine was only to be released on a limited-scale (for healthcare workers and at-risk populations) seems only to indicate that it was done for political gain, and not because the vaccine was actually safe and ready for distribution.

CHINA

COVID-inspired anti-Chinese racism

The final key player is China. The source of what is dubbed by people like President Trump the “China virus”, or “Wuhan virus”, many are thus made fully aware of who to blame for the pandemic and this wanton loss of life. The tale of the virus having originated from “bat soup” provides the context for which people can attribute tragedy to foreign customs. The virus acts as a guise, which enables racist behaviour. Asian Americans are subjected to virulent hostilities. Justin Tsui was told to “go back to [his] country”, Abraham Choi was spat on, called a “Chinese f-ck”, and that “all of you should die, and all of you have the Chinese virus.” Jay Koo was threatened with murder by strangers on the street, which he closely escaped by coughing and pretending to have the virus. In America, those of Chinese descent have historically been accused of bringing disease, with landmark legal cases like that of Jew Ho v. Williamson revealing how pandemia and racism go hand in hand. This is an age where political tensions between the US and China are at an all-time high, as signified by the breakdown of diplomatic relations in July with the US ordering China to close its consulate in Texas, and China doing the same with the US consulate in Chengdu. In this modern Cold War, both countries paint the other as the evil counterpart to their force of good, as they vie for global influence through diplomacy, military force and mercantilism, the coronavirus is just another means through which this animosity can be manifested.

Vaccine diplomacy

China is determined to utilize vaccine diplomacy to rectify the negative image the coronavirus has tainted them with. Their leading vaccine (among nine candidates), aptly named Coronavac, is borne from biotech giant Sinovac. China intends to utilise this as a tool with which to endear themselves to other countries: Brazil, which was the country third-worst affected by the virus, has been promised 6 million doses of the vaccine by January.

Terms native to the field of international relations can be imported into discourses around vaccine politics, which have presented themselves as a new channel through which to exercise power. Along with “vaccine nationalism” and “vaccine diplomacy”, one also encounters accounts of China attempting to become a “vaccine superpower” by providing vaccines for masses of people. In May, President Xi Jinping promised to share the vaccine with the world, setting China up to be favourably compared to the US, where President Trump was preoccupied with buying up a large bulk of production of new vaccines in a nationalist, protectionist move which only antagonised other countries. Another example of vaccine diplomacy can be seen in China’s proposal to prioritise distribution of their vaccine to Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia and the Philippines, in a clear attempt to take advantage of the health crisis to forge or strengthen alliances. 

 

Life Science Companies and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Commitments to Expanded Global Access for COVID-19 Diagnostics, Therapeutics, and Vaccines

 

Joint Communique 

COVID-19’s existence anywhere poses a threat to communities everywhere. The health, social, and economic impacts can only be addressed through the collective actions of stakeholders across private, public, and philanthropic sectors in partnership with civil society. As organizations dedicated to improving and protecting global health, with our varied skills, roles, and resources, we remain committed to doing our part in ending this pandemic worldwide. Earlier this year AstraZeneca; Bayer; bioMérieux; Boehringer Ingelheim; Bristol Myers Squibb; Eisai; Eli Lilly; Gilead; GSK; Johnson & Johnson; Merck & Co. (known as MSD outside the U.S. and Canada); Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany; Novartis; Pfizer; Roche; and Sanofi together with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation each pledged ourselves to the fight against COVID-19. 

Collectively, we have launched the most expansive and ambitious pandemic R&D response effort in history, with the promise of a range of interventions that can help end the pandemic. Creating these innovations is not enough, however. Through partnerships with other stakeholders we are committed to ensuring global access to diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines that will help to accelerate the end of the pandemic. 

To accomplish this critical goal, we will:  

•  Develop innovations for patients worldwide. We will continue advancing the research anddevelopment of COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines that are suitable to meet theneeds of populations around the world. To do so, we will work to expand clinical trials to account fordiverse representation including lower-income settings and endeavor to address the specificproduct characteristics needed for use in lower-income settings even after new innovations arebrought forward.
•  Strive for timely availability. By scaling up manufacturing at unprecedented speed and much earlierthan usual, we will bring large quantities of safe and effective innovations to countries around theworld for broad distribution as early as possible, no matter their income level. Mechanisms forrapidly escalating supply must be aligned with the specific context of a rapid pandemic response andtailored to each product, with options including early voluntary licensing and appropriateapproaches to peer-to-peer innovator company manufacturing agreements. 
• Enable affordability for lower income countries. We will pursue a range of approaches to makeproducts we are developing or supporting affordable in lower-income countries. These approacheswill be independently determined by each supplier in response to the pandemic to address thesignificant affordability challenges, including approaches such as donations, not-for-profit supply, orequity-based tiered pricing based on countries’ needs and capabilities.
•  Support effective and equitable distribution of these innovations globally.
  
  
  We will strive towardsequitable allocation of our products and support global mechanisms like COVAX, recognizing the most effective approach to equitable access will vary across vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics.We also will use our collective voice alongside other global health stakeholders to advocate for the strengthening of health systems and distribution networks so crucial innovations reach everyone who needs them. In doing so, we support evidence-based prioritization so that health care workers, high-risk individuals, and other priority groups identified by WHO and other health authorities are protected for the duration of the pandemic, regardless of the country they live in. We will advocate for equitable distribution, recognizing that sovereign nations have final decision-making authority. 
•  Maintain public confidence in our innovations. We will continue making the safety of individualswho receive products we are developing or supporting the highest priority. Adherence to thestrictest scientific and ethical standards in product development and in manufacturing processes willremain the top priority over speed or politics.

Access to interventions to fight COVID-19 on a global scale requires financial resources, assets, infrastructure, and jurisdictional support and collaboration beyond the capacity or role of the signatories to this commitment. We therefore call on governments, multilateral institutions, companies, NGOs, and others to build on our commitments and efforts already underway to: 

•  Provide sufficient, dedicated, sustainable, and timely funding for the procurement and delivery ofthe tools necessary to end the COVID-19 pandemic.
•  Diversify representation in critical decision-making and coordination bodies with special emphasison voices representing low-income and lower-middle-income countries.
•  Continue quickly developing and communicating clear guidance on product needs in lower-resource settings as early as possible as our understanding of COVID-19 and the tools to combat itevolve.
•  Advance fit-for-purpose regulatory and liability processes for all stakeholders involved, which prioritize safety while not slowing down access to critical new tools.
•  Build and maintain public confidence in the approval mechanisms for diagnostics, therapeutics, andvaccines by ensuring robust safety and efficacy reviews and removing unwarranted political considerations from these discussions and the approval process.
•  Enhance country readiness and in-country delivery systems by ensuring adequate expertise and resources are in place for effective country planning, distribution, and follow-up for new diagnostics,therapeutics, and vaccines.

The world’s extraordinary situation requires unprecedented collaboration across every part of society. To date, we as life science and philanthropic organizations have risen to this challenge and recognize the need to push further. The commitments above will save lives only if partners across the entire development-to-deployment pathway work together to guarantee products reach the people who need them. The ACT-Accelerator offers a forum for collaboration and action, and the global community must collectively mobilize the resources partners have identified as critical to ending this pandemic for communities everywhere. By aligning those resources with the commitments above, we believe we will not only enable a faster path out of the current COVID-19 crisis but will also lay the foundation for a strong pandemic preparedness ecosystem the next time a pandemic arises.

 

 

AstraZeneca: I+D en vacunas con dinero público

 

Un total de 170 personalidades mundiales, entre ellos premios Nobel, ex jefes de Estado y ex primeros ministros, enviaron una carta a Joe Biden, presidente de EE UU, para pedirle la suspensión temporal de las patentes de las vacunas de la covid. “Han sido la inversión pública y la colaboración internacional las que han traído las vacunas”, dicen. Lo confirma un estudio que revela que el fármaco de Astra Zeneca se financió en un 97% con fondos del Reino Unido, la UE y otros organismos públicos.

El estudio más ambicioso hasta la fecha sobre la financiación de las vacunas frente al coronavirus, en este caso la de AstraZeneca, revela que la industria farmacéutica soportó menos del 3% de los costes de investigación. La mayor parte de los 120 millones de euros invertidos llegaron del Gobierno del Reino Unido (45 millones), la Comisión Europea (30 millones) y entidades financiadas también con fondos públicos (centros de investigación y fundaciones). Esta prueba de lo relevante que ha sido la financiación pública vuelve a poner sobre la mesa el tema de la liberación de patentes, extremo por el que 170 personalidades mundiales enviaron ayer una carta al presidente de EE UU, Joe Biden, para pedir la suspensión temporal de estas licencias.

 

“Han sido la inversión pública y la colaboración internacional las que han traído las vacunas”, resumen en un comunicado los autores del estudio, investigadores de la organización independiente Alianza de Universidades por las Medicinas Esenciales en el Reino Unido. 

El trabajo, avanzado ayer por el diario británico The Guardian y pendiente de ser revisado antes de su publicación en una revista científica, rastrea cientos de millones de ayudas públicas a la investigación en las últimas dos décadas y localiza las que han hecho posible la vacuna. 

 

Estas nuevas informaciones avivan el debate sobre la posibilidad de dejar sin efecto el sistema de patentes que impide fabricar vacunas a otros productores que no sean los titulares de las licencias. Esto, apuntan los críticos, está retrasando la inoculación a la totalidad de la población mundial. Así lo evidencia que nueve de cada 10 dosis se han pinchado en los países ricos, mientras los más pobres tendrán que esperar meses o incluso años. Este escenario, más allá de la ética, aumenta el riesgo de que surjan variantes del virus que hagan ineficaces las vacunas, según los expertos. La suspensión temporal de las patentes mientras dure la pandemia ha ganado adeptos en los últimos tiempos, como evidencia la carta pública remitida a Biden. Entre los firmantes están los expresidentes del Gobierno de España José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero y Felipe González, el expresidente francés, François Hollande o el ex primer ministro británico Gordon Brown. “Estamos esperanzados por las informaciones según las cuales vuestra Administración está examinando una suspensión temporal de los derechos de propiedad intelectual de la OMC [Organización Mundial del Comercio] durante la pandemia, como propusieron Sudáfrica y la India” el pasado otoño, continúa.

La OMC ha sido tradicionalmente el foro en el que los países ricos —en los que tienen su sede las grandes farmacéuticas— han defendido los intereses del sector. “De hecho, la exención de las patentes la están paralizando en este organismo un grupo muy reducido de gobiernos, entre ellos Estados Unidos, la Unión Europea, Reino Unido, Suiza y Japón. Sin este veto, nuevos actores podrían incrementar la producción”, explica Irene Bernal, investigadora de No Es Sano, entidad que aboga por el acceso universal a los fármacos y el fin de las patentes. 

Tercera vía 

La Comisión Europea defendió hace 10 días que la escasez de vacunas “no se resolverá suspendiendo las patentes” porque hay “una insuficiente capacidad de producción”. José Félix Lobo, catedrático emérito en Economía de la Universidad Carlos III (Madrid), coincide en que “a corto plazo, la suspensión de las patentes no resolvería el problema” y añade que “para lograr que [las vacunas] lleguen a los países más vulnerables, es necesario dotar de más recursos a Covax [coalición participada por la Organización Mundial de la Salud] y establecer mecanismos para que las vacunas encargadas de más por los países ricos sean reenviadas a los que no tienen. Reformar el sistema de patentes es necesario, pero ahora no es lo más prioritario”. Guillem López-Casasnovas, director del Centro de Investigación en Economía y Salud de la Universidad Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona), recuerda que “la OMC ha tenido siempre un mecanismo para la exención temporal de las patentes”. “Ejecutarlo solo requiere la voluntad de los gobiernos, pero antes deben ponerse de acuerdo, asumir la indemnización a la farmacéutica y aceptar el precedente que genera”, añade.

En la OMC ha surgido la llamada tercera vía, propuesta a principios de marzo por una decena de países, entre ellos Australia, Canadá, Chile y Colombia. Esta iniciativa aboga por impulsar acuerdos entre farmacéuticas para que las titulares de las patentes puedan ceder la producción de más dosis a otras compañías. Para la UE, esta es la mejor fórmula para incrementar la producción durante los próximos meses. No Es Sano, en cambio, la ve como un “movimiento defensivo del sector y una solución que no ataca el problema de raíz, que es el obstáculo que las patentes suponen para que vacunas y otros medicamentos lleguen a todos”. (Ver)

Imágenes: Slideshare F.Comas/PHARMACOSERÍAS