What is the TRIPS waiver and what does it have to do with the COVID-19 pandemic?

by Gaea Katreena Cabico (Philstar.com), 7 Jun 2021

MANILA, Philippines (Updated 8:40 a.m., June 8)— Public health advocates have been calling on the Philippine government to help push for a global waiver on patent protections for COVID-19 technologies to provide poor countries easier access to vaccines and medical products to combat the pandemic.

Supporters of the proposal said the government should support the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) waiver on vaccines, medicines and diagnostic tools to prevent, contain or treat COVID-19 for the duration of the pandemic

The TRIPS Council of the World Trade Organization will reconvene on June 8 to 9 to discuss the revised proposal that was submitted by South Africa, India and 60 other countries.

What is the TRIPS waiver?

In October 2020, India and South Africa advanced a proposal to the WTO for a temporary waiver on some provisions of the TRIPS agreement.

They said the waiver is meant to avoid barriers to the timely access to affordable vaccines and medicines, and to the scaling up of production of crucial medical products.

The waiver will cover obligations on copyright and related rights, industrial designs, patents and protection of undisclosed information. The revised proposal specified the duration of the waiver to be in force for at least three years.

“The TRIPS waiver is thus an attempt to put people over patents and improve vaccine equity on a global scale,” the Coalition for People’s Right to Health said in a statement issued on June 2.

In May, the United States agreed to support the waiver after initial resistance to it. Other wealthy nations such as those from the European Union continue to oppose it.

Why should the Philippines support it?

In a forum Monday, Dr. Julie Caguiat, spokesperson of the Citizens Urgent Response to End COVID-19 (CURE Covid), said support for the waiver “stems from the need to increase vaccine supply in poor countries and for the people, the Philippines included, without further burying them in debt and restrictive requirements especially during this public emergency.”

At present, the Philippines is rolling out four foreign vaccines in its massive inoculation drive. It has granted Emergency Use Authorizations to seven COVID-19 jabs. It has no publicly-owned infrastructure or capacity to produce vaccines locally.

CPRH said those limitations muddle the argument for compulsory licensing “but a TRIPS exemption may be a first step to incentivizing or revitalizing national industrialization, apart from widening access through decentralized negotiations.”

Dr. Joshua San Pedro, co-convenor of CPRH, said the Philippines might have the capability to produce vaccines, diagnostics, and medicines but does not have the patents or intellectual property rights for some technologies.

“If [there’s a] waiver, states can demand that the knowledge is shared without having to seek permission nor compensate the innovator,” he said.

Under the TRIPS agreement, patent protection for medical tools has to last at least 20 years from the date the patent application was filed.

Thus, no generic drug can be made except through compulsory licensing, which enables a competent government authority to license the use of a patented product without the consent of the patent holder.

Under this, the innovator still has rights over the patent, including a right to be paid compensation for copies of the product made under the compulsory license.

The country, which is grappling with one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in Southeast Asia, has been criticized for the slow pace of its vaccination campaign.

Since the program began in March, only 1.5 million of the country’s population of roughly 110 million have been vaccinated against COVID-19. More than 4.4 million people have received the first of two doses.

What is the government’s position on the TRIPS waiver?

San Pedro lamented the government’s lack of explicit support for the TRIPS waiver.

He noted the Philippines mentioned in the recently-concluded World Health Assembly that removing barriers to the intellectual property rule and recognizing that waiving patents are necessary to solve the shortage of COVID-19 vaccines.

“We’re starting to see some terms being used by government agencies but it’s not actually an explicit support of TRIPS waiver,” San Pedro said in a forum.

Philstar.com has reached out to the Department of Health for comments but it has yet to respond as of writing.

“We actually don’t know what our permanent mission to WTO will do. Will they support it? Will they be agnostic about it?” San Pedro also said. CPRH and other health groups will write a letter to the Philippine Ambassador to the WTO Manuel Tehankee to ask him to support the TRIPS waiver.

The Makabayan bloc at the House of Representatives has filed a resolution urging the Philippines to unconditionally support the waiver.

Since the resolution was filed before the sine die adjournment, it might be discussed once the regular session resumes after President Rodrigo Duterte’s last State of the Nation Address in July, Rep. Carlos Zarate (Bayan Muna) said.

“I think it’s very important that we do a similar campaign in the Senate as well as get the local governments to be involved in this because they’re in the frontlines of our vaccination rollout,” he said.