(CN) — With the coronavirus pandemic spreading faster in the developing world, the World Health Organization and national leaders on Friday launched a plea to ensure patents for drugs and vaccines developed to combat Covid-19 are shared around the world to ensure even the poorest can be treated.
The pandemic is entering a new phase where developing countries are now seeing the number of coronavirus infections and deaths rising. Friday saw Brazil, Russia and India all report record jumps, a clear sign the pandemic is accelerating in many parts of the world just as Europe, parts of Asia and the United States appear to be gaining control of their outbreaks.
Worldwide, the number of Covid-19 cases is approaching 6 million and more than 362,700 deaths have been linked to the respiratory disease.
For months, health experts have warned the pandemic will only be stopped once a vaccine or effective treatments have been developed and distributed around the world. The problem is that vaccines and drugs may be so costly that many people, even those in wealthy countries, may be unable to afford them.
To prevent that, the WHO launched an initiative on Friday involving the sharing of data, patents, blueprints, designs, protocols and other information that go into the making of tools to fight Covid-19. The project is called the Covid-19 Technology Access Tool.
“Now more than ever, international cooperation and solidarity are vital to restoring global health security, now and for the future,” the global health agency said.
By Friday, 37 countries had signed onto the pledge, though most of the signatories were smaller countries. A handful of European nations, including the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal, are among those joining the initiative. The world's superpowers – including the United States, China, Russia, France – have not signed onto the pledge.
However, China and many European countries, including France and Germany, have said they favor global distribution of vaccines at affordable prices. U.S. President Donald Trump has been mum on the matter.
“We have a challenge of a lifetime to guarantee universal access to health technologies we need to face Covid-19,” said Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado, who first proposed the idea of setting up a repository for Covid-19 information.
As an initial success story, he touted Boston Scientific, an American medical equipment maker, and the University of Minnesota joining the WHO initiative and providing the designs for a ventilator that can be produced anywhere in the world.
He also said the University of Costa Rica is providing the blueprints for a plasma treatment for patients who are seriously ill with Covid-19 and said designs for medical masks are being shared.
“There is no point in achieving these amazing technological developments if we cannot guarantee affordable access to these technologies,” he said.
Officials and experts who spoke during the launching of the initiative stressed that the pandemic requires a global response because as long as the virus is circulating anywhere it puts others – even those on the other side of the planet – at risk.
“As long as we have one person sick with Covid-19 anywhere in the world we are all potentially going to be sick with Covid-19,” said Jacques Dubochet, Swiss biophysicist and Nobel laureate, during the initiative's launching during a WHO briefing. “So it is a shared problem. However, if you have a shared problem, you need shared tools to tackle it.”
Joseph Stiglitz, an American economist and Nobel recipient at Columbia University, said overcoming the pandemic with therapeutics and vaccines cannot be left to the usual market forces.
“We're going to need billions of doses of whatever medicines are going to be produced. That means it is really important to scale up at a low price,” he said. “It's in the interest of all of us that the price be low and that is not going to be achieved through the monopoly pricing of the drug companies.”
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