Experts believe that COVID-19 vaccine makers didn’t share their technology, which led to the creation of Omicron variants.
Researchers in South Africa discovered the variant last week. It contains 50 mutations including 30 in the spike protein. This is what the virus uses in order to infect cells.
Omicron’s variant shows how the failure to offer vaccines to low- or middle-income countries allows coronavirus to easily evolve and spread.
Only 10% of the people living in Africa have been vaccinated with Covid, as compared to 54% in Europe or 62% in North America.
Moderna is one of the few companies refusing to make their vaccine technology available for use in developing countries.
Moderna has come under fire for its rich contract with the west and the protection of intellectual property. This is in contrast to making jabs more accessible to developing countries.
Experts say sharing the vaccine formula isn’t enough. Countries and businesses need to invest in factories and other infrastructure, so that more vaccine doses are available.
Moderna refuses to share the COVID-19 vaccine formula. It claims that ramping up production of its COVID-19 vaccine is more efficient than sharing its technology. Pictured: Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccination is administered to a healthcare worker in Zurich, Switzerland. November 20, 2021
Some experts believe not sharing the same vaccine formula partly contributed to the rise of variants, such as Omicron. It was detected recently by South African researchers.
Moderna declared earlier this year that it will not share its COVID-19 formula with any other company.
Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the company claimed intellectual property and stated that it was faster to grow its own production than share technology with other manufacturers.
Moderna’s decision to not help poorer countries has been criticized by many experts who claim it makes it difficult for the entire world to stop the spread of the pandemic.
DailyMail.com spoke to Dr Ali Mokdad from the University of Washington, who is an epidemiologist working at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. He said that Moderna’s inability to share its technology was part of what led Omicron to emerge.
He said, “We will always remember the work of Moderna.”
“They’re hurting me as an individual citizen by refusing to share it with other countries in order for us to end this pandemic sooner…And they haven’t.
Moderna is the only place I will buy my products. It is a fact that I am going to say.
Experts say that the spread of coronavirus is possible because poorer countries are unable to obtain vaccine doses. Image: Spread of
Mokdad spoke of a COVID-19 vaccination developed by Dr Peter Hotez (Dean of Baylor College of Tropical Medicine in Texas) and his Houston colleagues.
The vaccine is not yet approved by the World Health Organization but it has been patentable and can be manufactured by many vaccine producers around the globe at a low cost.
“Hotez made his vaccine freely available for everyone. Mokdad told the world, “Here’s how to make it.”
Dr William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, says there is both a humanitarian reason and a self-interest reason in getting vaccines to the rest of the world.
DailyMail.com’s Claude said that it was in the self’s best interest to have a pandemic involving a virus that is changing. The virus may mutate, creating new challenges.
“It is possible to be almost anywhere in a matter of seconds. You will find it soon if it’s not already in your vicinity.
“We want to be safe and we care about what happens over there, because it could impact us right away.”
Some countries have taken desperate measures because of the lack of sharing of vaccine formulas.
South Africa’s start-up, for example, is working to decode Moderna’s vaccine in order to produce it independently.
“I believe that reverse engineering is possible, but it would make a sad series of events if that were required to be done without voluntary licensing,” Dr Peter Chinhong, an infectious diseases specialist at University of California San Francisco told DailyMail.com.
“Financial aid shouldn’t be the primary concern when you’re in an emergency.”
Dr Arthur Caplan, a bioethics professor in the department of population health at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, disagrees that the vaccine companies are to blame and says the impetus is on countries to build the infrastructure needed to distribute the vaccine.
‘We had an effort to get rid of polio and maybe it was easier because it’s an oral vaccine, but we made great success,’ he told DailyMail.com.
“But it took thirty years to get to where we are today. You had to train people and get the vaccine to them.
“But, the push on the world for the structure to distribute [COVID-19 vaccines]. Until we have factories, the sharing of intellectual property won’t be very useful.
Dr Stuart Ray, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, holds a similar view and believes that just sharing the formulas for Moderna’s and Pfizer’s vaccines with the world will not be the key to achieving vaccine equity.
“The submission to [Food and Drug Administration]He told DailyMail.com that Moderna’s emergency authorization included the four vaccine components.
‘That helps. However, you will need to have the right equipment for your purpose.
However, there also been outrage after a recent analysis found Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna are bringing in millions of dollars of profits every hour.
People’s Vaccine Alliance is an international non-profit that works to end the world’s vaccine gap. It analyzed earnings reports from the three companies and determined they would make a total of $34 billion this year.
That’s $93.5 million per hour, $65,000 per minute, more than $1,000 per sec of profit.
‘My personal opinion is that that should never be the equivalent of a blockbuster drug,’ Schaffner said.
They feel pride in helping others and that is part of what they get from investing in a vaccine company.
The return on investments is a reasonable goal for all companies, however the bottom line should not always be the primary concern.
Schaffner stated, “Since my public health interests first, I don’t believe the invention of an amazing new vaccine should result with a windfall for investors.”
“A reasonable return on investment?” We can talk more about “reasonable”. A windfall is not a good idea. But a windfall?
