President Biden called on to waiver IP rules for Covid-19 vaccines

Over 170 former heads of state and government and Nobel laureates are calling on president Biden to waiver intellectual property (IP) rules for Covid-19 vaccines and to push for a people’ vaccine to help end the pandemic.

An open letter signed by former world leaders and Nobel Laureates urges president Biden to support a proposal from the South African and Indian governments to temporarily waiver IP rules related to Covid-19 vaccines and treatments. This would help scale-up the manufacture of Covid-19 vaccines and therapies around the globe, as companies would have access to the IP needed to effectively develop these products.

The open letter includes former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Gordon Brown, former President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, former President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of France François Hollande and Nobel Laureates Professor Joseph Stiglitz and Professor Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and more.

It asks president Biden to take action and to “let this moment be remembered in history as the time we chose to put the collective right to safety for all ahead of the commercial monopolies of the few.”

The letter was coordinated by the People’s Vaccine Alliance and also calls for the IP waiver to be accompanied by the open sharing of vaccine know-how and technology. At the current pace of vaccine production, poor nations are in danger of not being able to achieve mass Covid-19 immunisation until 2024. Further risks of not vaccinating the globe include the emergence of more variants which can leave people susceptible to the virus.

Gordon Brown, former prime minister of the UK, said: "President Biden has said that no one is safe until everyone is safe, and now with the G7 ahead there is an unparalleled opportunity to provide the leadership that only the US can provide and that hastens an end to the pandemic for the world.”

“An urgent temporary waiver of intellectual property rules at the World Trade Organization (WTO) would help us ramp up global supply of vaccines together with a global multi-year burden sharing plan to finance vaccines for the poorest countries. This would be in the strategic interests of the US, and of every country on the planet".

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Economics Prize Laureate, said: “While the US has made enormous progress in vaccinating its own population, thanks to the efforts of the Biden administration, that alone is unfortunately not enough”.

“New mutations of the virus will continue to cost lives and upend our interconnected global economy until everyone, everywhere has access to a safe and effective vaccine. Intellectual property is the utmost artificial barrier to global vaccine supply. We as a nation must lead with our allies to back the South Africa and India waiver at the WTO, insist on technology transfer, and strategically invest in production”.

François Hollande, former President of France, added: “The extreme inequality in access to vaccines around the world creates an unbearable political and moral situation. It is above all sanitary and economic nonsense as we are all concerned. That the Biden administration is considering waiving barriers related to intellectual property rules offers hope for the international community. If the United States supports the lifting of patents, Europe will have to take its responsibilities. In the face of this devastating pandemic, world leaders must prioritise the public interest and international solidarity”.