US Senators ask vax cos to share India plans

Five US senators led by Elizabeth Warren have written to drug makers Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, asking them to provide details on the plans to supply their Covid-19 vaccines in India and the rest of the world. The letter from the senators comes as India faces vaccine shortages in the middle of a raging pandemic that has so far claimed more than 2 lakh lives.The other senators who have signed on this letter are Edward J Markey, Tammy Baldwin, Jeffrey A Merkley and Christopher S Murphy. The companies are expected to respond by May 11.“India is a major producer of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines and has exported over 66 million doses globally since January 2021. But in the midst of the recent surge of Covid-19 cases, India is struggling to vaccinate people quickly enough to quell the outbreak. There are several steps that vaccine companies could take to expand access to vaccines globally, including in India,” the senators wrote.The senators suggested several steps that the companies could take to expand access to vaccines globally. They have suggested that the companies share their vaccine technology and manufacturing information with other companies to speed up production. “This technology transfer could take place voluntarily,” they wrote.There is also the World Health Organization’s mechanism for technology transfer known as the Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) and its recently launched mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub - which seeks to "expand the capacity of low- and middle-income countries to produce Covid-19 vaccines and scale up manufacturing" by facilitating the transfer of technology and intellectual property to those countries.Some US government officials have also put their weight behind India and South Africa’s proposal to the World Trade Organization to waive aspects of Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights. They have asked the US government to support this proposal. If this proposal goes through, it would temporarily lift certain intellectual property barriers and allow countries to locally manufacture Covid-19 diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines, the senators said.“Though Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and other companies have developed safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines, the uncontrolled spread of coronavirus poses significant risks to global vaccination efforts: as the virus proliferates, it evolves - increasing the risk of a variant developing that renders vaccinations ineffective," they wrote.

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