‘Don’t forget poor’ in coronavirus vaccine rush

政府正在向冠状病毒疫苗和治疗开发投入大量资源，并加大了压力，以确保结果将达到全球南方最脆弱的结果。

Academics, lawyers, non-profits and the leaders of some biotech firms havewritten to the WorldHealth Organizationarguing that “the broadest sharing of technology could save the most lives”. Last week Costa Rica’s President Carlos Alvarado Quesada敦促谁to set up a “pool” of patents and data.

Fears were heightened after the United States’ President Donald Trump apparently tried to buy the rights to intellectual property arising from a coronavirus vaccine project at a German company, whose work is partially funded by public, private and philanthropic money channelled through CEPI, theCoalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

“Asking the question of access as early as possible is really critical. If you wait until the last moment … the pressure to just go and ‘do’ will be so large that these kinds of questions will be skipped.”

梅内尔·马丁（Manuel Martin）

哥本哈根大学免疫学家阿里·萨兰蒂（Ali Salanti）正在开发一种疫苗part of a consortiumreceiving USD$3 million from the European Union, tellsSciDev.Nethe has been approached by several companies wanting to buy rights to his research.

“There have been some offers that were difficult to say no to from a financial point of view,” he says.

Thirty members of the European Parliament havecomplainedthat, despite the European Commission’s investment in COVID-19 research, “no legal provisions or requirements appear to have been put in place to ensure research outcomes will remain in the public domain and end products will be made accessible, affordable and available”.

同时，厄瓜多尔和智利担心他们会被拒绝进入compulsory licences, in order to sidestep patents to enable the generic manufacture of emerging vaccines and therapeutics.

由于COVID-19的严重性大流行变得显而易见，政府和慈善组织一直在用于治疗和疫苗的研发上投资大量资金。

欧盟委员会还为研究项目分配了5500万美元，除了与大流行疫苗有关的许多项目之外，研究项目。同时，许多捐助者正在通过CEPI传导资金，CEPI是公共，私人，民事和慈善组织的新合作伙伴关系，该组织正试图筹集20亿美元以开发三种疫苗，以便他们准备生产。它已经为八个研究项目提供了资金。

The UK’s Department for International Development currently leads CEPI’s national donors withUSD$309 million在资金中，德国给予了USD$153 million.

Campaigners say action to ensure the world’s most vulnerable will not be left behind is crucial now, rather than when the vaccine is ready.

“Asking the question of access as early as possible is really critical,” says Manuel Martin, an adviser with the humanitarian organisation Medécins Sans Frontières’ (MSF)Access Campaign.

“If you wait until the last moment … the pressure to just go and ‘do’ will be so large that these kinds of questions will be skipped.”

CEPI says it is now trying to establish coronavirus vaccine manufacturing capacity in multiple jurisdictions “to mitigate the risk that any one local government could seize all output of vaccines for domestic use”.

“This approach would also enable increased production volume and reduced cost of goods,” a CEPI spokesperson tellsSciDev.Net.

然而，即使有强大的谈判地位，马丁认为，CEPI很难承受国家与疫苗制造商之间的双边协商合同。

“That isn’t the fault of CEPI. The response really needs to be a global one, it cannot be a national one,” he says.

This is why the global vaccine alliance Gavi, the WHO, national governments, regulators, civil society, and philanthropic organisations are holding urgent discussions about creating an allocation system to ensure that those who most need the vaccine get priority access.

This is essential not just for reasons of fairness, says the CEPI spokesperson, but also because “if a COVID-19 vaccine is to be used effectively to end the pandemic, we’re going to need to ensure that vaccine can be deployed globally”.

“Currently, there is no global entity that has that responsibility, so that is something that the world will need to start thinking about now and quickly. One idea would be to establish a globally fair allocation system for any vaccines produced.” The world may agree to set up a global purchasing agent, for example.

CEPI was accused last year of watering down its equitable access policy after large vaccine manufacturers argued the policy was not consistent with a competitive business model. MSF says the new policy is vague and not tough enough on drug companies or states, but CEPI says the former “rules-based approach mandated specific access requirements that were unworkable” and had been altered to a “principles-based approach”.

然而，无国界医生的马丁（Martin）称赞了CEPI采取的其他措施，例如将公平访问权的原则纳入其核心使命，并邀请WHO和MSF在研究和开发过程中的关键时刻参加“舞台门评论”。