By Michael Rosen

As the delta variant of COVID-19 gallops around the globe, how is its rapid spread affecting the debate over the proposal to waive intellectual property rights for virus-related vaccines and treatments?

This debate has raged over the past 10 months, ever since South Africa and India introduced a proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to suspend Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) for COVID-19 vaccines. The discussion intensified in early May when the Joe Biden administration announced its support for the proposal. Since then, the battle lines have been mostly stable, with pharmaceutical pioneers such as Pfizer and countries such as Germany and Australia stoutly resisting the measure.

But how is the quickly proliferating delta strain of the
virus impacting the discussion?

In some ways, it has raised the stakes: The more infectious
variant has sickened more people the world over, thus intensifying the need for
vaccine production and access in the developing world. This has inevitably
escalated the fight over the best way to do so: by suspending patent rights and
forcing the transfer of vaccine technology (as waiver backers contend) or by
encouraging pharmaceutical companies to increase vaccine production and urging
Western governments to purchase doses for the global south, as opponents argue.

In addition, delta has led regulatory agencies like the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend administering a third booster shot to the elderly
and the immunocompromised. Here in Israel, where the new strain is running
rampant, the government has recommended boosters for anyone over the age of 50 (with an
expectation that the age will soon be reduced to 40). With some countries
jabbing millions of their citizens with a third dose before others in the
developing world receive even their first one, the terms of the “vaccine
equity” debate have been sharpened.

At the same time, the delta variant has shown the limitations of the vaccine, with infection breakthroughs much more common than with earlier virus versions. For instance, while the Pfizer vaccine was believed to be 90–95 percent effective against the original COVID-19 strains, it’s as low as 42 percent effective against delta; the Moderna jab’s effectiveness hasn’t plunged quite as much but has still been reduced from the high-90s (against the earlier strains) to as low as 72 percent (against delta). And if the vaccine indeed confers less protection than previously thought, its reduced effectiveness may serve to lower the temperature on the TRIPS debate.

In the meantime, the WTO late last month delayed until September its next meeting of the member states to formally discuss the waiver, as “disagreement persisted on the fundamental question of what is the appropriate and most effective way to address the shortage and inequitable access to vaccines and other COVID-related products.” Some pro-waiver countries lambasted the decision, with Indian officials charging that “some members failed to engage in the text-based negotiation” and indulged in “selective interpretation of rules and procedures during the negotiations.”

But in parallel, discussions between drugmakers and
developing countries have progressed, with Pfizer and BioNTech agreeing with South Africa in late July to engage the
country’s Biovac Institute to manufacture 100 million doses per year for use in
Africa. As I have previously argued in this space and elsewhere, these types of
agreements make far more economic and ethical sense than waiving patent rights,
and promoting them may in fact have been the underlying purpose of the Biden
administration’s announced support for the waiver in the first place. If delta’s
eruption helps spur further such deals, the world will be the better for it.

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