US to share vaccine technologies with WHO

United States President Joe Biden has promised that America will share the Covid-19 vaccine technologies with other countries as part of the programme to fight the pandemic as well as be ready for similar future outbreaks of epidemics at the second global Covid-19 summit, jointly organised by the United States, Germany, Belize, Indonesia, and Senegal, on Thursday. Biden said, “We are making available health technologies that are owned by the United States government, including stabilized spike protein that is used in many Covid-19 vaccines.”

This second summit follows that held in September, where it was promised to get more people vaccinated, and make tests and treatments accessible and protect health workers.

The summit has collected $3 billion, according to the White House, of which $2 billion is marked for immediate response and $962 million for World Bank’s pandemic preparedness fund. The United States had contributed $200 million for pandemic preparedness, bringing the total American contribution to $450 million. The European Union is to contribute 300 million euros for vaccination, and $450 for the preparedness fund. The non-governmental organisations (NGOs), philanthropies and the private sector contributed another $700 million.

Fourteen other countries, World Health Organisation (WHO), Google and other NGOs are attending the summit. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “It’s through sharing and empowering lower-income countries to manufacture their own health tools that we can ensure healthier future for everyone.”

The United States plans to share 11 Covid-19 technologies with the United Nations (UN)-backed Medicines Patent Pool (MPP).

The US National Institutes of Health will license the technologies to WHO’s Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), and this will be shared with manufacturers of the lower-income countries. The Americans have delivered 500 million vaccine does out of the 1.2 billion they had promised in September and committed $19 million in funding, Biden said. He also remarked, “There is still so much left to do. This pandemic isn’t over.” He also observed that the United States had marked the one million Covid deaths. “1 million empty chairs around a family dinner table. Each irreplaceable.” Biden said that he has asked the Congress for $22.5 billion for additional Covid-19 response funds, including $5 billion international aid.

It seems that the Americans and the Europeans are trying to make amends for the tardiness they showed in helping the low-income and poor countries in coping with the Covid-19 pandemic. And it is indeed surprising that the Americans are willing to license vaccine technologies which are owned by the American government, as stated by Biden. It reveals that the anti-Covid vaccines that have been rolled out by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are not entirely private sector initiatives, and that the American government had a role in it.

It also shows that as the technologies belong to the American government, President Biden has the authority and the discretion to license it to WHO without a commercial angle to it. It looks like America wants to get back to its earlier policy of asserting its soft power along with its military and commercial power. Ever since the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist bloc in 1991, the United States declined as a world power while remaining the strongest economy.

And American companies, especially the tech giants in the world of Internet, were seen as global predators. President Biden’s attempt to share vital vaccine technologies with the rest of the world is a grand gesture and a strong hint that America wants to be seen as a power for the good as well. The question of course remains whether America can convince the world of its good intentions.