Who killed the Covid-19 vaccine waiver?

But Big Pharma said a waiver would threaten investment and innovation — and rich nations, particularly EU members and the U.K., resisted it, arguing it would not bridge the huge gaps in vaccine availability between wealthy and poorer nations. POLITICO and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal how this proposal was stymied and watered down by negotiators until it was finally signed off by governments desperate to save a flagging project. Through interviews with diplomats, officials, lobbyists and activists, as well as analysis of meetings and internal documents, we can reveal the key players behind the death of the waiver. Big Pharma used its vast lobbying and influencing efforts to try to kill a proposal that threatened the very tenets of the industry. Top industry executives enjoyed direct access to senior officials within the EU, which was opposed to the proposal from the very start and encouraged potentially rogue member countries, including Italy and France, to fall into line. And the U.S., after a dramatic late intervention in favor of a waiver for vaccines, eight months after the proposal had been tabled, failed to follow through as the Biden administration came under pressure from industry and Congress, as reported by the Intercept. When a compromise was finally reached, its value was questioned. The result — a small shift on one aspect of IP rights — was dismissed as “useless” by one Geneva-based diplomat, and far from the shining example of global solidarity that the WTO claimed. Victor do Prado, who until earlier this year was one of the top officials at the WTO, said it was difficult to say whether a waiver would have boosted production, but calls the response to the proposal symptomatic of the “unilateral, nationalistic response” to Covid-19. “This is a global problem. You need a global solution, and a global solution needs cooperation,” he said. “A waiver might have helped that cooperation.” Winnie Byanyima, co-chair of the nonprofit People’s Vaccine Alliance and executive director of UNAIDS, the United Nations’ HIV program, said POLITICO and the Bureau’s findings were “extremely serious” and called for further investigation. Take the call Government advisers are no strangers to phone calls and emails from lobbyists. The Belgian adviser worked with the country’s prime minister, Alexander De Croo, and took multiple calls from Big Pharma representatives during the Covid-19 pandemic. They were eager to explain why they thought a waiver would affect their company’s investment in research and development. But the Janssen call stands out. Like other large pharma companies, J&J opposed the waiver, warning publicly that opening up vaccine production to “inexperienced manufacturers” could undermine consumer safety. Belgium, which is a European hub for the pharma industry, also already opposed the waiver. But Janssen appears to have been worried that the country’s stance might change, possibly after some Belgian politicians appeared receptive to the proposal. Soon after Belgium’s development cooperation minister, Meryame Kitir, appeared on TV to support a lifting of vaccine IP protections in late April 2021, the adviser received a call from Janssen’s public affairs spokesperson. “They said, ‘If Belgium is supporting this, the [J&J] headquarters in New Jersey are going to be agitated and they might consider reviewing the R&D [research and development] budget,’” the adviser told POLITICO and the Bureau. Janssen calls itself the largest private investor in R&D in the country, having invested €1.54 billion there in 2019. Nine days after Kitir’s TV appearance, the Biden administration made a shock U-turn by announcing it would support a waiver that was limited to Covid-19 vaccines. The Belgian prime minister responded by calling a cabinet meeting, where he made it clear the country would not be following suit. The adviser insisted that the call from the Janssen lobbyist did not change Belgium’s position and that such conversations were “what every lobbyist does.” Belgium believed a waiver may have boosted vaccine production by a small amount — no more than 10 percent — but that this was not worth disrupting the country’s pharma industry, including R&D at universities. De Croo’s office said: “At no time did the Belgian government take any decision or was it forced to take a decision on the production of Covid-19 vaccines under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, either related to patents or on any other aspect of this issue.” J&J denied that such a conversation took place and said it does not represent the position of the company. However, it expressed concern about the growing use of compulsory licenses — where a government allows a company other than the patent holder to make a product — “particularly for the purpose of favoring domestic industries.” “[Using compulsory licenses] threatens the overall IP system, which has enabled the development of lifesaving medicines for millions of patients today and has the potential to create new therapies for millions more in the future.” The adviser characterized the spokesperson as “pretty low on the ladder” in J&J, and said they took the call with a “big pinch of salt.” “Is this spoken through with the headquarters in New Jersey? I don’t think so. Is it just like a cheap way to get their point across quickly? Yeah, probably.” They eventually became so “sick and tired” of receiving lobbying calls from pharma companies about the waiver that they simply stopped picking up. “Every time they brought up the topic of IP again, I said, ‘Look, we’ve made up our minds. This was the position from the start. I don’t see any major thing changing this,’” the adviser said. “The entire IP discussion dragged on for so long, that in the end, I always just ignored their calls.” Apply some pressure The above account echoes that of others around the world. An Indonesian official told POLITICO and the Bureau that, in 2020, when the country was in discussions with a different pharmaceutical company about a Covid-19 drug, the company pressured Indonesia on its waiver position. The “stick” was reduced investment, the official said. This pressure delayed Indonesia’s decision to co-sponsor the waiver, they said. It did not do so until May 2021, after civil society groups and Indonesian pharmaceutical companies urged the government to back it. Sometimes the industry did not even need to issue such threats. A number of officials from countries that received no direct pressure from pharmaceutical companies still said that their countries decided their positions on the waiver with Big Pharma in mind. Colombian officials in Geneva, for instance, were told by their government to withhold support for the waiver to avoid disrupting vaccine negotiations with Pfizer and others, according to two people with knowledge of the negotiations. When Covid-19 vaccines first arrived in late 2020, they were “like pure gold,” one said. But low- and middle-income countries such as Colombia had little leverage, meaning negotiations were one-sided. (In early
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