ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated families and communities and disrupted society and the economy. The prompt availability of effective and affordable vaccines offers the most promising path out of the pandemic. Global solidarity was reflected in the early publication of the genome sequence and the sharing of protocols for the PCR test. However, WHO’s proposed “solidarity vaccine trial” which would yield comparative data about vaccines and the proposal that vaccine technologies be shared to accelerate vaccine development and production were rejected by pharma. In March global cooperation around diagnostics, medicines and vaccines moved from WHO to the ‘Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator’, a new ‘multi-stakeholder public private partnership. The “vaccine arm” of the Accelerator was the Covax Facility which would mobilise donor funds to pay for vaccines for the 20% priority populations in low and lower middle income countries. By July however, it was clear that massive bilateral advanced purchase agreements by the high income countries would reserve most of the early supply of effective vaccines and jeopardise the fund-raising for Covax. The rise of ‘vaccine nationalism’ looks set to cause long delays in access to vaccination in many L&MICs, and significant morbidity and mortality as a consequence. We propose a policy platform to promote a more equitable roll out of vaccines in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic including: full funding of Covax and expansion of local production of vaccines supported by technology transfer and an immediate waiver of key provisions of the TRIPS Agreement.

摘要

COVID-19大流行摧毁了家庭和社区，破坏了社会和经济。迅速提供有效且负担得起的疫苗为摆脱大流行提供了最有希望的途径。全球团结反映在基因组序列的早期公布和 PCR 测试协议的共享上。但是，世卫组织提议的“团结疫苗试验”将获得有关疫苗的比较数据，而制药公司拒绝了共享疫苗技术以加速疫苗开发和生产的提议。3 月，围绕诊断、药物和疫苗的全球合作从世卫组织转移到“获取 COVID-19 工具加速器”，这是一个新的“多利益相关方公私伙伴关系”。Accelerator 的“疫苗部门”是 Covax 基金，它将动员捐助者资金为低收入和中低收入国家 20% 的优先人群支付疫苗费用。然而，到 7 月，高收入国家的大规模双边提前采购协议显然将保留大部分有效疫苗的早期供应，并危及 Covax 的筹资。“疫苗民族主义”的兴起似乎将导致许多低收入和中等收入国家在获得疫苗接种方面的长期延误，并因此导致显着的发病率和死亡率。我们提出了一个政策平台，以促进在 COVID-19 大流行的背景下更公平地推出疫苗，包括：