Consider This from NPR - Supply Scarce Abroad, Demand Down At Home: Vaccine Access Is Starkly Unequal

Episode Date: May 6, 2021

Vaccine demand is beginning to slide in the U.S., but in other parts of the world, the pandemic is devastating countries where vaccines are more scarce. India is one of those countries. There only 2% of the population is fully immunized. There's an argument that waiving intellectual property rights could boost global vaccine production, and this week the Biden administration came out in support of that idea. Mustaqeem de Gama, South Africa's counsellor at the World Trade Organization, tells NPR that U.S. support is a "game changer." Meanwhile, in some parts of the U.S., it's getting harder to find enough arms for vaccine doses. Katia Riddle reports from Oregon. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu forward. Most of the global vaccine supply has gone to a handful of rich countries. And at the current pace, many other people around the world won't get a shot for years. That's why progressive Democrats and public health advocates had been pressuring the Biden administration to do something. And it finally did on Wednesday. We have some breaking news now on the global vaccination front. U.S. trade representative Catherine Tai just announced that the Biden administration now supports waiving intellectual

property protections on COVID-19 vaccines. In supporting a waiver of intellectual property rights for vaccines, the Biden administration is opening the door for cheaper, generic versions to be made by other countries. And that's something pharmaceutical giants staunchly oppose. Well, the U.S. position is really, really important. It's a game changer. Mustaqeem Degama is the World Trade Organization counselor for South Africa, one of the many nations that support a waiver for vaccine patents.

Now, others, the U.K., Australia, and EU countries do not. The WTO has a say on vaccine patent rights under a decades-old international agreement. And to waive those rights, there has to be a consensus among its roughly 160 members. And an agreement could take months. But U.S. support for the idea, well, it's a big step. Every day we spend arguing about intellectual property, people are dying. The influence that the Biden administration may have on these discussions would be instrumental.

Consider this. In the long term, waiving patent protections could help with a global shortage of vaccines. In the short term, the U.S. is dealing with a shortage of its own in vaccine demand. From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish. It's Thursday, May 6th. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Womply. Womply is committed to helping self-employed workers and small businesses get their PPP loan. Application determines eligibility. Apply for free at WOMPLY.com slash NPR. This message comes from NPR sponsor Deloitte,

offering informed perspectives on the evolving business and economic impacts of the pandemic, from consumer behavior trends to outlooks for key sectors of the business, at Deloitte.com slash US slash COVID hyphen 19. A few years ago, a website popped up in Stockton, California, and conspiracy theories started ramping way up. And it's being funded by a conservative movement underneath the table. And I was like, oh my gosh, you guys, people really believe this. What happens when the local news outlet isn't fact-checking conspiracy theories, maybe encouraging them? Listen now from NPR's Invisibilia podcast.

It's Consider This from NPR. On a global level, it's hard to overstate how unequal things are with vaccines right now. In India, where just 2% of the population is fully vaccinated, the virus is spreading on a devastating scale. India set a new world record for cases on Thursday, 412,000. And that's probably an undercount. Meanwhile, in the U.S., nearly a third of the country is fully immunized. New cases and deaths have fallen significantly in recent weeks. And the Biden administration is trying to find more arms for more doses. Now we're going to have to bring the vaccine to people who are less eager. On Tuesday, the president announced a shift in the nation's vaccine strategy,

an acknowledgement that demand is slowing. The U.S. daily average is now around 2 million shots, down nearly 35 percent from a month ago. In response, the government will allow states that want more vaccine doses to order them from a federal stockpile to better match supply with demand. The administration also asked pharmacies to allow walk-in shots and will redirect FEMA resources from mass sites to smaller, pop-up clinics and send doses directly to clinics in rural areas. Our goal by July 4th is to have 70 percent of adult Americans at least one shot and 160 million Americans fully vaccinated. That would mean 100 million shots, some first, some second, over the next 60 days. The federal government's new vaccine strategy is aimed squarely at places like Linn County, Oregon,

where, as Katia Riddle reports, they're struggling to give doses away. The Linn County Fairgrounds is 95 miles south of Portland. Hundreds of medical volunteers drive hours to work here at the county's mass vaccination site. Are you just one person getting a shot? Okay, going around lane three. One retired doctor even road tripped from San Francisco to be here. County Public Health Director Todd Noble optimized for speed building this operation. They can vaccinate eight people a minute, but now he's dealing with a new problem

of efficiency. As you can see, we can fit hundreds of people in here. There are not hundreds of people in here right now. Yes, there are not. Initially, staff were vaccinating as many as 3,800 people a day. On this day, they did only 700. We have tons of extra doses, and people aren't coming in, unfortunately, and we want to get them in. Forty-five minutes away in the town of Sweet Home, It's kind of a sore subject, you know? Shelby Adams loads groceries into her car in the Safeway parking lot. She says nothing could persuade her to get the vaccine. I think it was brought out way too quickly.

Sweet Home had its economic heyday decades ago when it was a thriving logging town. But now it's more of a pass-through where people stop to gas up on the way to go camping in the Cascade Mountains. With a population close to 9,000, the county health department could vaccinate the whole town in just a few days back at the mass vaccination clinic. But many people here aren't thinking along those lines. With fries and diet Pepsi? Yes. A point of pride in Sweet Home is an old-fashioned A&W, where a car hop hand-delivers orders to parked cars. I think I have more fear of the vaccine than I do the COVID itself.

Robert Arnold is waiting for his hamburger special. Many people here say basically the same thing he does. They're scared. I don't think it's my job to give people medical advice. Brian Hotrim is a pastor at Sweet Home Evangelical Church. He's not vaccinated either, but he says he doesn't advise people one way or the other. I work hard at staying out of that because that's not my lane. There are dozens of churches in the area. Many pastors say the vaccine has been so divisive they've not said anything publicly for fear of alienating people. There are 126,000 people in

Linn County and less than half of them have been vaccinated. I have one more. Back at the mass vaccination clinic, emergency manager Neva Anderson and her husband Eric Anderson are trying to find an arm for one last dose. They have five hours until it expires. Should I call the bowling alley if they want? I already did. The couple has been working here throughout the pandemic, sometimes seven days a week. Neva says they've never wasted a shot. So do you want to go ahead and take it out to the truck stop?

Yeah, we can do that. Eric drives the county van over to Love's truck stop just off I-5. Hi there. I'm with the health department. I got an extra COVID vaccine if anybody wants it. Anybody want a COVID vaccine? Health department's here with an extra. No dice. Half an hour later, the team finally finds someone who works at an Italian restaurant downtown. So this arm? Sure. Alex Loomis says service industry hours have made it hard to get to the clinic. You guys are really saving me some time, so thank you.

County health workers have learned one thing on these vaccination missions. Once someone says no, it's not worth trying to persuade them. Better to move on to the next person. Katie Ariddle in Linn County, Oregon. While the Biden administration refocuses its national strategy on places like Linn County, it's also made a major change to its international strategy this week. And that, of course, is the patent decision we talked about earlier. The Biden administration believes waiving vaccine patents will help boost global production. Not everyone shares that view. Do you think that would be helpful?

No. Why not? Well, there's only so many vaccine factories in the world. Bill Gates, in an interview with Sky News last month, echoed the views of pharmaceutical companies who want to keep their vaccine patents. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is among NPR's financial supporters, well, it works closely with drug companies and has also committed a lot of money to COVID relief. Money, of course, is one argument for why drug companies should keep their vaccine patents. The argument goes like this. The only way the world got highly effective vaccines so quickly is that there was a lot of money at stake. Plus, drug companies argue, the global vaccine supply chain is already running at full capacity.

They say trying to expand it could be a safety concern. People are very serious about the safety of vaccines. Every manufacturing process has to be looked at in a very careful way. Well, I think it's a self-serving argument because many of the vaccines that are being supplied to the West are actually produced in developing countries. South Africa's Moustakim Degama, who you heard from earlier, says those countries are more than ready to increase their vaccine production capacity. His country and many others have been calling for a vaccine patent waiver since last year. He spoke to NPR's Ari Shapiro about why.

There is capacity and there is the relevant experience to produce vaccines in a comprehensive and a safe way. And so from this point of view, we believe that if we could have a limited targeted waiver to ensure that we can ramp up production in various parts of the world, we would go a long way to ensure that we address not only the prevention, but also the treatment of COVID-19. You say this would be a limited targeted waiver. It sounds like you're trying to balance the concerns that this would take away intellectual property rights, profits, and incentive to innovate from the major drug companies. Exactly. I think there's a misconception out there that the waiver is directed to invalidate intellectual property protections, but this is not the case.

Any producer, any manufacturer, or any owner of intellectual property rights still could claim compensation. We do not believe that the waiver will have any impact on innovation, actually, it will create a further basis for innovation and the sharing of knowledge and technology. And this will spur further collaborations. So I guess at the end of the day, the waiver really is one of the tools in the toolbox to ensure that we scale up production, that we ensure further collaboration, especially with the emergence of so-called variants. If this waiver were granted, how quickly would vaccine manufacturing be able to ramp up in these countries? Well, from our experience, we would need at least a quarter or two to ramp up production. We have a very good example in South Africa, where a company was accorded a voluntary license,

and within four to six months it was able to start production. Based on the contract and the information that we have, that company will be able to produce between 350 to 400 million doses for the current calendar year. The company has also recently announced that it's invested in a second line of production and within the next eight months should be able to produce up to a billion doses. Now, this is really an indication of the type of skills and expertise that we have in the developing world. And so passing this waiver makes a lot of sense with or without the cooperation of companies.

If this waiver doesn't go through, what does that mean for the global fight against the pandemic? Well, I think it would be disastrous, not only on the level of the loss of human lives, but also at the economic level. We give variants an opportunity to proliferate that will set us back, even those countries that have rolled out vaccination programs. And I think vaccine hesitancy is also creeping in. Many developed countries have the vaccines, but people are not taking up the opportunity. So I think on various levels, it would be catastrophic if we are not able to pass this waiver. Mustaqeem Degama is the World Trade Organization counselor for South Africa.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Cornish.