Drug Companies Are Increasingly—if Slowly—Sharing the Medicinal Wealth
From the beginning, the pandemic has been a crisis that is equal parts biology and geography. Your age, immune system and underlying conditions all have an impact on whether you’ll contract COVID-19 and how sick you’ll get if you do. And so, increasingly, does your address. Live in a wealthy country in the developed world and vaccines and post-infection treatments are both, on the whole, available. Live in a poorer country in the developing world and, too often, you’re out of luck. As the World Health Organization reports, over 70% of high-income countries have vaccinated more than 40% of their people, while the entire African continent has vaccinated just 77 million people—or 6% of its population.
The situation is made worse by the fact that rich countries are not fulfilling their promises to share the vaccine wealth with countries in need. The U.S., for example, has pledged to donate 1.1 billion vaccine doses to the developing world, but has so far delivered fewer than 200 million, according to Vox. The European Union, which promised half a billion shots, has made good on less than 20% of that figure.
Still, there was some encouraging news today, regarding not vaccines but the other big part of the pharmaceutical arsenal: antiviral pills. As the Associated Press and others report, Pfizer has signed a deal with the U.N.-backed Medicines Patent Pool, agreeing to share the formula for its antiviral pill—which cut hospitalization and risk of death by 89% in clinical trials —with generic drug-makers serving 95 countries, representing 53% of the world’s population. Pfizer receives no royalties from manufacturers in low-income countries; even in higher-income areas, it will waive payment for as long as COVID-19 remains a public health emergency. Production of the generics is expected to begin within months. The pharmaceutical company Merck reached a similar deal with the Medicine Patent Pool in October, agreeing to make its antiviral pill, molnupiravir, available in 105 poorer countries.
Vaccines are a different matter—and for too many nations, they remain out of reach, forcing scientists there to be resourceful. As the South Asian news outlet WION reports, investigators in South Africa are working to pick the lock of the Moderna vaccine, effectively reverse engineering it from publicly available data. The country is working alongside the World Health Organization, which is coordinating the training of scientists and the research itself, as well as helping to provide critical raw materials. Moderna’s vaccine was chosen for the domestic manufacturing work partly because it can be stored in freezers at temperatures as high as 5°F, compared to the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, which can get no warmer than -76°F.
Meanwhile, Moderna is feeling the heat from another direction. For months, as CBS News reports, the company has been engaged in discussions with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with the NIH arguing that its scientists contributed to the development of the mRNA technology behind the vaccine. That would give the government partial ownership of the vaccine patent and allow it greater control in pricing and production. Moderna, happily, has agreed to the NIH proposal to share ownership, which, as the company said in a statement , would give the government “the right as co-owners to license the patents as they see fit.”
All of this represents real, if stutter-step, progress. None of it fully resolves the inequities of geography. Until the entire world has the pandemic under control, the suffering and dying in the hardest hit places will only continue.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
More than 556 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of this afternoon, of which more than 443 million doses have been administered, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 58.9% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
More than 253.8 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 12 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 5.1 million people have died. On Nov. 15, there were 533,920 new cases and 6,517 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here's every country that has reported over 5 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded more than 47.2 million coronavirus cases as of 12 a.m. E.T. today. More than 764,000 people have died. On Nov. 15, there were 143,685 new cases and 1,271 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Nov. 16, 1:30 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
The crowds will return to Times Square on New Years Eve: New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced that revelers who can prove that they're fully vaccinated will be welcome to celebrate 2022 in person, reports the New York Times. Attendees who are unable to be vaccinated for medical reasons must show proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours. Health officials acknowledge that the rules are not airtight, and vaccinated people with breakthrough infections may still spread the virus to others in the crush of people, not only in the streets but in restaurants and bars in the vicinity.
Lockdowns are once again coming to the European Union as the continent reported a record 2 million cases in the past week, reports the Washington Post. Austria is the first country to impose new rules, forbidding people who are not fully vaccinated from leaving their homes for anything other than work, school or buying essential supplies. Germany is said to be considering a similar move, according to CNN. The new surge in cases is being blamed on the 35% of the population of the bloc that remains unvaccinated.
Amazon has agreed to pay a $500,000 fine for failure to inform employees in its California facilities of the number of COVID-19 cases among the workforce, reports the New York Times. The company ran afoul of the state’s right-to-know law, which mandates such reporting. Under an agreement reached with the state attorney general, Amazon must inform workers within a day of the exact number of new COVID-19 cases in its warehouses, provide information on disinfection and other safety plans and submit to supervision by the attorney general.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has added the Czech Republic, Hungary, Iceland and the island of Guernsey to its list of level 4—or highest risk—travel destinations, reports CNN. The move comes amid the surge in COVID-19 cases across the European continent. In order to be placed on the level 4 list a country must have had more than 500 cases per 100,000 residents over the previous 28 days. While travel is not forbidden to the 70 nations overall on the list, it is discouraged.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Jeffrey Kluger and edited by Angela Haupt.
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