COVID-19 vaccines

COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and diagnostics need to be available for the people who need them most. This will end the pandemic sooner, for everyone.

Today, access to COVID-19 vaccines is limited by political and commercial interests and restricted further by purchase agreements struck by wealthy countries. 

Australia has made deals for enough COVID-19 vaccines to inoculate the population three times over. This level of vaccine hoarding will take vaccines away from countries and people who need it now – and could prolong the pandemic by years. 

Meanwhile, monopolies and intellectual property rights are preventing the massive upscaling of production needed to make enough doses. While COVID-19 vaccines have benefitted from substantial public taxpayer money for their development, clinical trials and manufacturing, the funding has not come with any provisos to ensure they are made affordable and available to those who need them most. 

The fact is, there are a limited number of COVID-19 vaccines and to overcome this pandemic, we need to work globally to ensure that high-risk and vulnerable people are vaccinated first.

What is MSF calling for?

Past experiences have shown that limited supply, nationalistic control and high prices can result in barriers to access. To ensure that COVID-19 vaccines are treated as ‘global public goods,’ MSF is demanding the following from governments and pharmaceutical corporations:

• Increased global supply. As many competent vaccine manufacturers as possible should be able to produce vaccines to ensure sufficient global supply. Pharma must temporarily waive the obligations of intellectual property during the COVID-19 pandemic so that other manufacturers can also produce the vaccines to meet demand.
   
• Affordability. They must be sold at cost and no pharmaceutical corporation should seek to profiteer off this pandemic. Despite a handful of companies, including AstraZeneca, promising to sell COVID-19 vaccines at a ‘no-profit’ price during the pandemic, no company has yet shared their costs around research and development, clinical trials or manufacturing. 
   
• Transparency. Governments must demand pharma open their books so that the public can see what’s in these deals, demand affordable prices and scrutinise critical safety and efficacy data.

What can the Australian government do?

“Now is the time for Australia to show commitment to the global community by ensuring that any vaccine or treatment developed during this pandemic is available and accessible to all who need it. The reality is the pandemic isn’t over until it’s over for everyone,” said Jennifer Tierney, Executive Director of MSF Australia.

MSF is calling on the Australian government to:

• Back a proposal put forward to the World Trade Organization that would stop patents from getting in the way of production and supply of COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, diagnostics and personal protective equipment. 
   
• Respect WHO’s equitable allocation framework for COVID-19 vaccines where 3% of the world’s most at-risk groups must get immunised first. Only then can Australia start vaccinating the wider community.
   
• Allocate COVID-19 vaccines to a humanitarian stockpile as initiated by the World Health Organization and organisations including MSF. In our experience we see that too often people in crisis-affected humanitarian contexts including refugees, asylum seekers, marginalised populations and people living in conflict areas, are left behind. These are populations that invariably have the least access to or are excluded all together from national health services.