Will US Covid vaccine patent waiver lead to more jabs in India? Not really
Hindustan TimesMaya Johal, a 29-year-old schoolteacher in Delhi, booked herself for a coronavirus vaccine shot a week ago, but is still awaiting her turn. “For example, the underlying technology used to develop a vaccine can be protected by patents, while manufacturing methods and techniques can be protected by trade secrets,” wrote authors Mario Gaviria and Burcu Kilic in the first analysis of mNRA vaccine patents in the journal Nature published on May 12, 2021. In their paper, “A network analysis of Covid-19 mRNA vaccine patents”, Gaviria and Kilic explain that this vaccine platform uses multiple technologies, including the main mRNA technology, lipid nanoparticle technology and a delivery-system. Pointing to a complex web, the researchers noted: “However, the patent numbers are redacted in all the filings, making it difficult to determine which are relevant to the production of Covid-19 vaccines.” India’s advantage and way forward Health experts say one potential solution to end the vaccine shortage — one that the World Health Organization has backed — is a “patent pool” similar to one used to make HIV drugs available to poorer countries in the 1990s. Els Torreele, policy associate at the University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, said India, as a “large economy with abundant capacities for pharmaceutical production including vaccines, is in an excellent position to quickly retool production lines for the manufacturing of a variety of technologies and raw materials needed for the global scale up of Covid-19 vaccines”.