Source · Select Committees · Foreign Affairs Committee
Recommendation 10
10
Paragraph: 30
To defeat covid-19, and tackle future pandemics, a wider range of countries need the ability...
Recommendation
To defeat covid-19, and tackle future pandemics, a wider range of countries need the ability to produce vaccines. The production of AstraZeneca by India’s Serum Institute offers a good model for technology transfer to build this capacity. Many national leaders have backed the call for a temporary waiver on intellectual property for covid-19 vaccines. We recommend that the Government pursues a wide range of means to bring about greater manufacturing capacity in lower-income countries, including through expanded technology transfer schemes. In its response to this report, the Government should set out the steps it is taking to transfer vaccine technology to low- and middle-income countries, and its goals in terms of increasing global vaccine production.
Paragraph Reference:
30
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
We are working with industry, COVAX and other international partners to champion other routes to scaling up capacity and engage on forward supply planning in order to accelerate the progress of vaccination programmes across the world. We are working with the African Union’s Partnership for African Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM) to provide technical support to scope opportunities for vaccine manufacturing in Africa, including support for strategy and market forecasting. We have also provided technical support to develop robust manufacturing business plans that can attract investment capital from the private sector and development finance institutions. This includes support to Biovac to manufacture vaccines in South Africa, Institut Pasteur in Dakar, Senegal and to the Moroccan government. This support has helped catalyse investment that will see COVID-19 vaccines produced on the African continent in 2022. Our support to CEPI helped secure initial manufacturing commitments to COVAX in June 2020. We will host the 2022 CEPI replenishment conference to support the development of manufacturing networks and build R&D and production capacity in low- and middle-income countries. CEPI has signed an MOU with the African Union to support manufacturing capacity. The Government welcomes the commitments made in the G7 Foreign and Development Ministers’ Equitable Access and Collaboration Statement, including support for production enablers on voluntary terms such as: licensing, technology and know-how transfers, contract manufacturing, transparency, and data sharing and models for public- private costs and risk sharing. We continue to promote voluntary licensing and technology transfer partnerships which make real, positive impacts on vaccine delivery. Partnerships like AstraZeneca and the Serum Institute of India, BioNTech and BIOVAC in South Africa and Moderna’s recent announcement of plans to establish an African manufacturing facility, demonstrate the ability of the existing IP framework to support collaboration. Alongside other factors (such as early investment into manufacturing, support for procurement and distribution mechanisms such as COVAX), collaborative public-private partnerships driven by cooperation and trust can make real-world change. We encourage industry to continue with this type of collaborative approach and are working to facilitate additional partnerships. Alongside our work to realise our dose sharing commitment, the UK is seeking to be a responsible global customer; only procuring doses that we need and, working with manufacturers to reduce, defer or exit agreements, where appropriate, to allow other countries and COVAX to directly and more rapidly procure the vaccines that meet their needs.