Protestors gather outside of AstraZeneca HQ in demand for people's vaccine

Protestors will gather today (11 May) outside of AstraZeneca’s headquarters and company sites, as well as Oxford University, to demand that the company openly license its Covid-19 vaccine.

The demonstrations have been organised by Global Justice Now in protest against AstraZeneca’s and Oxford University’s intellectual property (IP) sharing practices in regard to their Covid-19 vaccine.

Global Justice Now is calling on AstraZeneca to openly license its Covid-19 vaccine and commit to sharing technology and know-how with the World Health Organisation (WHO). They are also calling on Oxford University to commit to making all of its future medical innovations licenced.

AstraZeneca is being targeted by Global Justice Now due to the company’s refusal to join the WHO’s Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), which was designed to facilitate the sharing of technology and knowhow for vaccines and treatments. More so, Global Justice Now takes issue with the estimation that 97% of funding for the company’s vaccine came from public sources.

The development of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine has also gone against the university’s policy to openly license its innovations. Oxford University’s default approach is to offer “non-exclusive, royalty-free licenses” for the duration of the pandemic as defined by the WHO. However, the university deviated from this when it signed an exclusive supply agreement with AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca is supplying the vaccine at a not-for-profit price, but once the WHO declare the pandemic over, it will be able to start charging profit prices.

The demonstrations will take place as AstraZeneca holds its Annual general Meeting (AGM). Over the weekend, posters appeared throughout the UK highlighting the levels of public investment in vaccine research and development and the profits made by pharmaceutical companies.

The protests come after president Biden announced his administration would support an IP waiver to help scale up global vaccine production. Prime minister Boris Johnson has now come under pressure to do the same, in a letter signed by over 400 academics, public health experts, MPs, charities and others.

The IP waiver was first proposed by India and South Africa at the World Trade Organisation and was backed by over 100 mostly low-and-middle income nations. The move however was blocked by countries and nations including the UK and EU.

Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said: “Scientists at Oxford University, a publicly-funded institution, developed this lifesaving vaccine through a research and development process that was 97% publicly funded. The resulting vaccine should have been openly accessible to everyone, but AstraZeneca swooped in and privatised it.

“The UK is reaping the benefits of the highly effective vaccines that are now available, but people in low and middle income countries are still dying daily by the thousands from Covid-19. 

“AstraZeneca like to portray themselves as the good guys, but they’ve boycotted attempts to pool the vaccine knowledge they control just like all the other Pharma giants - and now claim they have no time to share this knowledge globally. Today, we’re demanding AZ pool this publicly created knowledge so the whole world can ramp up production of these vaccines.”

EPM has reached out to AstraZeneca for a comment.