Ibero-America calls for liberalisation of anti-COVID patents

Throughout the 27th Ibero-American Summit on April 21st, the same mantra was repeated: without vaccines for the entire world population, or at least 70% of the population, sustainable economic recovery will not be possible because SARS-CoV-2 has no borders and the pandemic knows neither wealth nor poverty, nor ideologies or creeds. 

The concern of the various leaders of the 22 countries that make up the Ibero-American spectrum is that anti-COVID immunisations should be distributed more evenly; most warned that, if the current imbalance continues, failure will be imminent: 53% of the anti-COVID vaccines supplied so far have immunised 16% of the world's population located in the richest countries.

In Soldeu, Andorra, the semi-presential conclave left a series of relevant announcements: 1) in the run-up to the Summit, the International Pandemic Treaty was signed on April 20 with the virtual participation of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron; 2) the creation of a Latin American Epidemiological Observatory, a proposal of the Ibero-American General Secretariat; and 3) the implementation of a framework agreement for the circulation of talent in the region.

During the inauguration of the meeting, António Guterres, head of the United Nations (UN), condemned "the nationalism of vaccines" while recalling women and children as the main victims of the current health and economic disaster.

"The global vaccination campaign represents the greatest moral test of our times. Yet I am deeply concerned that many low-income countries have not yet received a single dose," he remarked in dismay.

The convergence of the participating heads of state, as well as several of the foreign ministers, is based on the consensus of multilateralism, the strengthening of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the entire global health and financial architecture.

Chile's President Sebastián Piñera said that it is "undesirable" not to learn from current mistakes, and that the best way out of the current maelstrom is to leave behind all the ills of the pre-pandemic world. 

"We want a better health architecture, there is no justice in the distribution of vaccines, they are insufficient... we have to unite in the face of this enormous shortage; and also overcome this political deficit that is evident in all countries, the desirable thing for everyone is that we have a turning point to move towards a green and fair development," said Piñera with a certain self-reflection.

There was no shortage of adjectives for an "unprecedented crisis" in which its rapid resolution depends on the speed of production and distribution of serums, an exercise that most people described as "worrying shortages" and "unacceptable hoarding"; an attitude of injustice and even selfishness because "a few are providing many vaccines while many have few or none at all".

Juan Orlando, President of Honduras, pointed out during his telematic intervention at the Ibero-American Summit that the distribution of the vials is an "act of humanity" and condemned their hoarding.

The health emergency has shown the failure of international bureaucratic institutions, reflected Luis Lacalle, the dignitary of Uruguay, who emphasised how individualism has prevailed over collectivity.

Cuba, which is working against the clock to successfully launch two vaccines, Soberana 02 and Abdala, spoke in the voice of its president, Miguel Díaz Canel, about the serious regional problems "that have worsened" the circumstances of millions of lives, preventing progress on the 2030 Agenda while developed countries "hinder" a just international order.

For the President of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, the commitment to Latin America is essential, as it is his main sphere of economic influence, a space that it is of course in his interest not to fragment.

"Spain will offer between 5% and 10% of its COVID-19 vaccine shots to Latin American and Caribbean countries this year, some 7.5 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine, and we will do so through the COVAX mechanism and the Pan American Health Organization of the WHO," he said, to the delight of the Latin American leaders in attendance. 

It is precisely the COVAX mechanism, a laudable idea of the WHO, headed by Tedros Adhanom, that is proving to be the great failure in the field of anti-COVID serum management, especially for middle-income countries and especially for low-income countries. 

More than a few participating dignitaries expressed their disappointment "because it has not worked" and partly because it has not raised all the funds the mechanism needs: the WHO has put the odyssey at $33 billion and has only managed to raise $11 billion. Its intention is to deliver cheap and/or free vaccines to cash-strapped countries. 

And so far it is being done in dribs and drabs and with enormous difficulties in the market to obtain them, as stated by Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who spoke on behalf of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The only three heads of government who did not participate in the Ibero-American Summit, either in person or online, at the meeting in Soldeu, Andorra, were: the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro; his Mexican counterpart, as well as Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. 

During his presentation, Ebrard referred to the enormous difficulties in managing and achieving access to vaccines, which has become a "special challenge" and exemplifies the discrepancies.

"In the world, 928 million vaccines have been injected, 8.6% in Latin America, but with enormous disparities that speak of the difficulties in obtaining them: while Mexico has provided 20 million, the United States has provided 200 million," he said. 

For the head of Mexican diplomacy, such a situation should "never ever" happen again, and he called on Latin America to show more solidarity with itself, especially in the area of vaccine production.

"We have several countries in phase one of experimentation with a vaccine against the coronavirus, such as Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Mexico; Cuba is the country that is the most advanced with several vaccines already in phase three of experimentation... when any of the countries in the region have the vaccine, we must support each other, make common cause, respond promptly and acquire it; we must never allow something like what we are experiencing to happen; we have already seen how slow multilateral organisations are," he emphasised.

The president of Peru, Francisco Sagasti, also spoke out "not to leave anyone behind" and insisted that the pandemic has made inequalities visible and reversed years of progress.

The Ibero-American Summit, which also has a lot to do with politics, was not lacking in spice and morbidity... Nicolás Maduro's last-minute refusal to take the floor in order to hand it over to his foreign minister Delcy Rodríguez was a foretaste that something was going to happen. Venezuela and Mexico were among the last countries to speak.

Earlier, in their respective turns, several leaders of the region made reference to the complex situation Venezuela is going through: Sebastián Piñera of Chile urged Venezuela to respect democracy, values and human rights; for his part, Luis Lacalle of Uruguay asked Maduro to "open the doors and windows" to democracy urgently, and Iván Duque of Colombia recalled that they have received millions of Venezuelan emigrants.

In defence, the Bolivarian foreign minister, Rodríguez, counterattacked Duque, pointing to Colombia's "failures" in the face of drug crops, which have even increased in the midst of a pandemic, turning "Colombia into the main producer" of cocaine in the world. 

Although a formal declaration requesting the liberalisation of patents on anti-COVID vaccines was not signed, as expected, the Spanish president pledged to take this discussion to the European Union (EU) in order to exert more international pressure.

Bolivia's president, Luis Arce, perhaps most avidly blurred the current moment in time: "The powerful pharmaceutical transnationals that hold patents on diagnostics, medicines and vaccines must release them and put them in the public domain or issue voluntary authorisations at no cost to achieve real access for all nations without exception.

Arce urged the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation to release patents on coronavirus drugs and vaccines to achieve greater equity.

An International Pandemic Treaty such as the one advanced in the pre-summit framework is a first building block to be taken to other multilateral fora until it becomes global and can be signed under the umbrella of the WHO and the UN.

The driving force behind the idea is Charles Michel, President of the European Council, under a design of cooperation, interrelation, proactivity, access to information, to technology and above all that seeks to prevent the interruption of supply chains as happened in the current health crisis.

But it also has a preventive character, to detect that a virus, bacteria, fungus or any biological threat is neutralised in time; to have an international protocol of what to do when a country detects a biological-epidemiological threat.

The international reaction to SARS-CoV-2 was very slow partly because it relied on the first WHO reports, which in turn were delivered by China, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, but the official version from Beijing is that they were only a transit site for the virus because it was already initially circulating somewhere else. 

From December 2019, when the first cases were reported, until the WHO declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020, valuable time was lost globally, with millions of lives lost. 

The new Treaty, said Xavier Espot, President of the Principality of Andorra, must serve for the early detection of infectious diseases, but also for resilience and an effective response to ensure universal access to treatment and medical solutions in a framework of stronger international cooperation and solidarity under the coordination of the WHO.

The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, also a driving force behind this initiative, participated virtually and took the opportunity to emphasise everything he has learned over the last year, for example, how to manage a crisis that naturally forces us to reconverge and preserve cooperation in vaccines in order to move forward. 

For his part, his Spanish counterpart, Pedro Sánchez, argued that effective prevention and response mechanisms are needed, along with the importance of tracking and identifying the true extent of the virus; and having a robust supply chain and multilateral system in place to act on the maxim that "no one is safe" until we are all safe.

The pandemic claims human lives every day: so far, it has claimed 3 million people affected by the coronavirus worldwide, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. No one ever wants another pandemic like this....