WTO

Failure of the UK and EU countries to agree to TRIPS waiver costs lives and undermines the credibility and future of WTO. 17.5 million people have died from COVID-19 in the 20 months since WTO talks about relaxing COVID-19 intellectual property (IP) rules began - the equivalent of nearly 30,000 people a day, said campaigners from Oxfam and the People’s Vaccine Alliance today ahead of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial.

Less than half (49 per cent) of the 2.1 billion COVID vaccine donations promised to poorer countries by G7 countries have been delivered, according to new figures published today by Oxfam and the People’s Vaccine Alliance.  

Responding to news that governments at the World Trade Organization (WTO) have agreed a deal on patents for COVID-19 vaccines in developing countries, Max Lawson, Co-Chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance and Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam, said: “This is absolutely not the broad intellectual property waiver the world desperately needs to ensure access to vaccines and treatments for everyone, everywhere.

“People have become complacent about COVID-19. Our global (health) funds are fast running out of money. Vaccine inequity is getting worse,” said former UK prime minister Gordon Brown today. 

In reaction to Pfizer’s announcement of voluntary licenses of its COVID-19 oral antiviral treatment Paxlovid to the Medicines Patent Pool, People’s Vaccine Alliance spokesperson and Oxfam America’s Senior Advocacy Advisor, Robbie Silverman, said: “Pfizer’s announcement to voluntarily licence the COVID treatment Paxlovid is welcome but is far from enough." 
 
 

New figures from the Peoples Vaccine Alliance reveal that the companies behind two of the most successful COVID vaccines – Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna – are making combined profits of $65,000 every minute. The figures based on the latest company reports are released as CEOs from pharmaceutical industry meet for the annual STAT summit —the equivalent of a ‘Big Pharma Davos’— from 16-18 November.

Responding to an International Labour Organisation’s report, ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the world of work, campaigners have called global vaccine inequality “a collective act of social and economic self-harm”.

On the eve of President Biden’s global COVID-19 summit on the side-lines of the UN General Assembly, campaigners from the People’s Vaccine Alliance are calling for world leaders to go beyond empty promises of charity and deliver bold action to increase manufacturing and access to COVID-19 vaccines around the world.

At least nine people have become new billionaires since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, thanks to the excessive profits pharmaceutical corporations with monopolies on COVID vaccines are making, The People’s Vaccine Alliance revealed today ahead of a G20 leaders Global Health Summit.

Ahead of shareholder meetings for the giant pharmaceutical corporations, the People’s Vaccine Alliance calculates that Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca have paid out $26 billion in dividends and stock buybacks to their shareholders in the past 12 months.