News & Analysis

South Africa Hails COVID-19 Vaccine Patent Waiver

Johan­nes­burg, South Africa — 
South Africa on Sat­ur­day hailed a WTO agree­ment to allow devel­op­ing coun­tries to start pro­duc­ing their own COVID vac­cines fol­low­ing a near two-year battle.
“We secured an agree­ment. It was a strong­ly fought agree­ment,” said Min­is­ter of Trade Ebrahim Patel, who along with India and NGOs had been call­ing for an intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights waiv­er on COVID-relat­ed treatments.
The World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion (WTO) announced a relax­ation of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty restric­tions on vac­cines Wednes­day in a move aimed at a pro­vid­ing more equi­table access to shots but which many observers crit­i­cized for being lim­it­ed in time and scope.
After months of wran­gling, and talks going down to the wire this week to win over some major play­ers in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing to a com­pro­mise, the Unit­ed States and Chi­na final­ly clinched the deal by agree­ing on which coun­tries would ben­e­fit from the waiver.
Both South Africa and India had been vocal in their demands for such a move which they said was need­ed to stop “vac­cine apartheid.”
Accord­ing to the WTO, 60% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion has received two dos­es of the COVID vac­cine but there are glar­ing exam­ples of inequity with only 17% hav­ing been inoc­u­lat­ed in Libya, with the fig­ure at 8% in Nige­ria and less than 5% in Cameroon.
In a state­ment, the South African gov­ern­ment salut­ed a waiv­er designed to pro­vide local vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ers with the right to pro­duce either vac­cines or ingre­di­ents or ele­ments that are under patents, with­out the author­i­ty of the patent hold­er, hail­ing this as a notable step for­ward — even if lim­it­ed to five years.
Pre­to­ria added that “to scale up the pro­duc­tion on the con­ti­nent, fur­ther part­ner­ships will be need­ed includ­ing access to know-how and technologies.”
The accord for the time being excludes, how­ev­er, tests and cost­ly ther­a­peu­tic treat­ments against COVID on which the WTO is to pro­nounce in the com­ing six months.
Com­mer­cial­iza­tion in Africa will be a chal­lenge, however.
Dur­ban-based South African phar­ma giant Aspen, which clinched a deal last Novem­ber with U.S.-based John­son & John­son to man­u­fac­ture a “made in Africa for Africa” Aspen-brand­ed COVID vac­cine Aspen­o­vax, said last month it could pull the plug owing to lack of orders.
“Our focus now is to ensure we address demand by per­suad­ing glob­al pro­cur­ers for vac­cines to source from African pro­duc­ers,” said Patel.
South Africa has three sites under the aegis of Aspen in Dur­ban, Afrigen in Cape Town and Bio­vac, also in Cape Town, which makes the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech vaccine.
Afrigen’s biotech con­sor­tium makes the mes­sen­ger RNA shot based on the Mod­er­na for­mu­la, the first to be made based on a broad­ly used vac­cine that does not require the devel­op­er’s assis­tance and approval.