World leaders want Covid vaccine deemed 'global public good'; Trump says 'America First'

Leers of China, France, Germany, and World Health Organization want any coronavirus vaccine to be deemed a "global public good," but President Donald Trump has ar idea: vaccinate America first. Behind principle of "global public good" lie two distinct issues: intellectual property rights and distribution of first doses of a vaccine. former might be easier to resolve than latter. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has said that Africa wants any vaccine against coronavirus to be patent-free. But that is unlikely because laboratories working to develop a vaccine will want to recoup billions of dollars that y invest.

And y can rely on support from US, which opposes any challenge to international intellectual property rights and repeated that position this week to WHO. So vaccine will probably t be free, although several companies have committed to providing it at cost. But that kind of at-cost promise is relative. It was me in past for drugs to treat HIV, said Matw Kavanagh, a professor of global health at Georgetown University. But generic drug manufacturers later found ir actual costs were a tenth as much or even less, showing re is leeway in how at-cost prices are set. Mark Feinberg, former chief science officer at Merck Vaccines and w CEO of International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, said pharmaceutical labs have learned ir lesson about making profits during a trdy and do t want to become pariahs.

That would hurt ir reputation and ir profits. Feinberg said he thinks patent to a coronavirus vaccine will be shared because once a vaccine is developed, single drug manufacturer can produce eugh of it to meet world demand and will have to partner with or manufacturers. So tough question becomes, who among 7.6 billion of us on Earth gets vaccinated first? - America First - WHO, European leers and NGOs involved in fight against COVID-19 aim to establish a new mechanism of equitable sharing of any vaccine. First in line to get a shot would be health care workers in any country hit by virus, followed by essential workers such as police, firefighters and bus drivers, before everybody else.

But Trump, er to get US ecomy and country back on track as he seeks re-election in vember, cares little for international solidarity. His ministration has a goal merely hypotical at this point because clinical trials of possible vaccines are only just starting of having 300 million doses on hand by January. unstated idea is that y would be eugh to vaccinate everybody in America.

"His mentality is highly insular. And his mentality is highly xephobic, which is opposite of what it takes to control a pandemic," said Sten Vermund, dean of Yale School of Public Health. But this is a globalized world and US relies heavily on or countries for goods and food. "We won't be rmal if rest of world is riven by coronavirus," Vermund said.

Trump ministration has alrey invested hundreds of millions of dollars in several experimental vaccines being developed by four companies - Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Safi and AstraZenec in hope that one or more of drugs come to fruition and are produced in US. Executives with Moderna and Safi have effectively told Europe to start placing orders. real backstop against vaccines becoming nationalized will be to build factories to make m in several continents. But this crisis is t like that of H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009, said Pascal Barollier, who works with Gavi, an organization that buys vaccines for developing countries.

"We are starting from scratch. We have vaccine, factories," he said.

A public-private coalition called Cepi, created in 2017 after world failed to develop a vaccine against Ebola, has invested half a billion dollars in nine companies working to develop vaccines against COVID-19. In exchange for that funding, coalition asks that any vaccine techlogy that turns out to be successful be shared so that a vaccine can be produced quickly and at scale. With that kind of public funding, labs are building extra vaccine production lines without even waiting for results of clinical trials. Some companies are teaming up: Moderna will be able to churn out doses in US for US market and in Switzerland for European market. Safi has formed an alliance with a rival, GSK; y each have several factories on both sides of Atlantic. In order to vaccinate entire planet against COVID-19, it would help if several vaccines emerge, rar than just one.