Foto: Getty Images.
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Mexico, like Argentina, proudly received that the World Health Organization (WHO) approved an anti-Covid-19 vaccine version from the Swedish-British laboratories AstraZeneca that share a patent with the University of Oxford.
The proclaimed objective of the presidents of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, and of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is to cooperate with those countries of Latin America and the Caribbean to access immunology at a reasonable price.
It is not much for the economic and financial situation of many, but it can benefit them in the face of a global distribution of so much inequality. Fernández spoke of a price of four dollars a unit, already handled in Mexico,
Nor is it a handout, because that amount allows you to recover the investment and perhaps even obtain a profit.
For example, in August 2020, AstraZeneca provided the United States with 300 million doses for $ 1.2 billion, a unit price of precisely four dollars, the same figure cited by President Fernández.
At the time, an AstraZeneca spokesperson said that this funding also covered the development and clinical trials of the vaccine, therefore, the same must happen now if the receiving countries have to pay the same price as the United States.
The main investors in the project are Carlos Slim, the richest man in Latin America and number 10 in the world, and the Argentine businessman Hugo Sigman, owner of biotech mAbxience.
The agreement is reduced to processing in Argentina the active principle of the European patent and packaging it in a plant of the Liomont laboratories in Mexico, and from that collaboration to distribute 250 million units in some countries of the region.
Slim Domit, son of the magnate who heads the project, made it clear that the foundation participates “with the availability of resources in addition to the governments of the countries,” with the aim that the vaccine is available “at very affordable prices.” .
Therefore, it is not a donation, which President Fernández confirmed when he reiterated that, thanks to Slim’s financing, a vaccine would be obtained “at more reasonable prices” and specified that “it could be around four dollars.”
López Obrador admitted that he could not give figures for private investments because “it is a non-profit action”, from which it could be inferred – without certainty of course – that the “reasonable price” of Fernández, or the “most accessible” of Slim son, they can bring us closer to a global figure of a billion dollars for the lot of 250 million units calculated.
How much more or less than a billion dollars will it cost to produce that total? We do not know, but there is the antecedent of the amounts of purchases from the United States at the same price.
If the costs of procurement by poor countries reach those digits, they will hardly be able to meet vaccination needs. The agreement, as far as it is known, does not speak of sales on credit.
López Obrador and Fernández cited the alliance they formed to jointly produce and package the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine as an example of their strategy. Photo: France24 / Archive
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It seems important to make some clarifications about the assessment of Carissa Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), who estimated it is the first decision of this type for an anti-Covid biological “elaborated” in Latin America.
That means that it is not a Latin American vaccine, much less its first biological anti-Covid-19, a title that cannot be taken from Cuba.
Just to clarify misinterpretations, the bi-national biologic approved by the WHO with the international name Covid-19 Vaccine (ChAdOx1-S (recombinant), or Vaxzevria (AZD1222), is a version of the Oxford-AstraZeneca patent.
If, as Etienne said, it is “a milestone for Latin America” in terms of technology transfer, the rights of Mexico and Argentina should be seen how far they go in this regard because in the annals of the legal battle to de-monopolize patents and open up the right to the world There are no tangible agreements of that nature.
The United States’ blockade of Cuba is a strong and repeated test in this regard: any article that has even one gram of product patented by the United States cannot be marketed with the island.
In order not to get too excited, it is good to know that, publicly at least, there is no hint in the agreement with Oxford-AstraZeneca that it is a technology transfer with all the rights that it should imply.
One lesson from this episode is that the version that has just been approved by the WHO, motivated by the commitment, according to Etienne, “to give continuous support to our countries to increase the production of critical drugs”, has skinny legs because it biases in a single case of decenes stored for the same purpose.
The lethargy of the WHO with Cuban vaccines is suspicious, as well as the arguments that are used for not granting the endorsement
The endorsements of three Cuban anti-Covid-19 vaccines surpass in all the basic indices of efficacy and safety to the replica of the Oxford AstraZeneca, and together with others of great quality and purposes according to the own requirements of the WHO, they sleep the eternal sleep waiting to do the same as with the Argentine-Mexican version.
Such lethargy is suspicious, as are the arguments that are used for not granting it the endorsement; They have little or nothing to do with medical-scientific parameters and focus on bureaucratic issues such as strategy and delivery schedule, which lead to think more about political obstacles than of another nature.
There is no intention to accuse, insinuate or hold the WHO responsible for contributing in any way to the blockade of the United States government on the island, but to remember that an endorsement of the vaccine or any medicine is also to be able to freely commercialize .
The WHO clears the way to use it, for example, in the United Nations Covax program, which aims to provide around two billion vaccines to developing countries.
Cuba is the first to have three vaccines of its own with excellent efficacy in immunizing 90 percent of the population, and two other candidates on the way to becoming one; the world leader in immunization of its children from two years of age, and booster vaccination with national biologics, despite the economic blockade of the United States, although the WHO does not recognize these feats.
(Taken from Prensa Latina)
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