EU seeks ‘concrete’ US plan on lifting vaccine patents
French president urges US to end its de facto ban on coronavirus vaccine exports; coronavirus will no longer be circulating in Britain by August, says government’s outgoing vaccine taskforce chief
Europe on Saturday passed the ball back to Washington in a debate over COVID-19 vaccine patents, pushing the US for a concrete proposal and a commitment to export much-needed jabs.
Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking ater a summit of EU and Indian leaders, said the EU had exported much of its own production and that America should follow suit.
“Now that a further part of the American population has been vaccinated, I hope that we can come to a free exchange of components and an opening of the market for vaccines,” she said.
French President Emmanuel Macron urged the United States to end its de facto ban on coronavirus vaccine exports.
“I call very clearly on the United States to put an end to export bans not only on vaccines but on vaccine ingredients, which prevent production,” Macron told reporters.
European Council chief Charles Michel said the bloc was ready to discuss a US offer to suspend patent protection on vaccines — once the details are clear.
“We are ready to engage on this topic, as soon as a concrete proposal would be put on the table,” Michel said at a EU summit in Portugal that discussed that subject, among others.
He added that the EU had doubts about the idea being a “magic bullet” in the short term and encouraged “all the partners to facilitate the export of doses.”
Italy’s prime minister, Mario Draghi, said that “before geting to the liberalisation of vaccines, other simpler things should be done, such as removing the export block that today the US firstly and the UK continue to maintain.”
“This, I would say, is the first thing to do,” he said. “The fact of liberalising the patents, even temporarily, does not guarantee the production of the vaccine.”
While at the summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a contract with drugs giant Pfizer/biontech for up to 1.8 billion doses of their patented vaccine had been concluded. Part of that supply is for EU exports to countries in need.
Influential voices support the push to waive patents, not least that of Pope Francis, who criticised puting “the laws of the market or intellectual property above the laws of love and the health of humanity.”
The World Health Organisation (WHO), India and South Africa have all called for patents to be temporarily suspended.
The EU leaders’ comments came on the second day of an summit that featured a bilateral meeting between the EU and India, where authorities on Saturday said the pandemic killed 4,000 people in a single day.
In a joint statement, both sides said “global co-operation” was needed to fight the pandemic and they “supported universal, safe, equitable and affordable access to COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostics and treatments.”
“The vaccination process is not a race amongst countries but a race against time,” they said, underlining the EU’S contributions to the Who-backed Covax facility and India’s role producing many of the vaccine doses distributed around the world.
BRITAIN: The new coronavirus will no longer be circulating in Britain by August, the government’s departing vaccine taskforce chief Clive Dix told the Daily Telegraph on Friday.
“Sometime in August, we will have no circulating virus in the UK,” Dix said, adding that he believed the vaccine booster programme could be pushed back to early 2022.
The government is looking at which COVID-19 vaccines would offer the best booster shot for vulnerable people later this year.
Dix told the Telegraph that he expects everybody in the UK to have been vaccinated at least once by the end of July, by which time “we’ll have probably protected the population from all the variants that are known.”
The UK has administered over 51 million vaccines and has been the second quickest country to give a first dose to at least half its adult population.
British officials said people under 40 should be offered an alternative to Oxford/astrazeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine where possible due to a small risk of blood clots.