President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday, June 21, that the “selfish and unfair” refusal by pharmaceutical companies and allied Western governments to grant emergency waivers to patents on Covid-19 vaccines endangered the whole world.
In passionate remarks, Cyril Ramaphosa blasted resistance to calls by India and South Africa for temporary patent waivers to increase production.
“It’s selfish, it’s unfair, it’s totally unfair,” Ramaphosa, a supporter of the waiver, said during the opening virtual session of the Qatar Economic Forum, a day after South Africa recorded 13,000 new cases in a third wave of COVID-19.
“We are facing an emergency which affects the whole world (…) and some countries refuse to waive this provision,” he declared.
The proposed waiver of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) has the support in principle of US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron.
But the pharmaceutical industry is against the waiver, as are Germany, Switzerland and the World Bank. They argue that this would stifle innovation and that vaccine supplies are constrained by a lack of manufacturing capacity. India and South Africa say they have sufficient capacity.
“All we are asking for is (…) a three-year period to allow countries that have the capacity to produce the vaccines,” Ramaphosa said, adding that: “Because no one is safe anywhere in the world without everyone being safe ”.
South Africa has vaccinated only about two million people, or 1.8% of its population, one of the lowest rates in the world. The country suffered a setback when Aspen Pharmacare (APNJ.J), local producer of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, had to destroy two million doses due to contamination at a plant in Baltimore, Maryland, United States .
Despite this setback, President Ramaphosa said his government would stick with J&J (which sends two million replacement doses) because it is a single injection vaccine, logistically much easier to manage in areas remote rural areas.
