Time for other vaccine makers to follow Oxford/AstraZeneca’s lead

The writer is vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford

Over a year ago, Oxford university scientists anticipated the potential impact of the emerging coronavirus and believed that they might be able to produce an effective vaccine. The speed with which they were able to do so was due, in part, to 20 years’ worth of work on infectious disease with colleagues in Africa and Asia. Given their experience in the developing world, they knew just how devastating a global pandemic would be in poor countries and what a risk this would pose to the rest of the world.

Many of their worst fears are coming true. Globally, we may have not yet reached the peak of the pandemic; the death toll could exceed 9m by September. The heart-rending scenes from India showing the devastating consequences of Covid-19 pose a challenge to the conscience of the world.

In an extraordinary feat of scientific and commercial ingenuity, highly effective vaccines have been developed in record time. They must now be deployed quickly where they are most desperately needed. If they are targeted at older adults and those with health conditions, we could mitigate the impact of this impending catastrophe. For this reason, we urgently need to make more vaccines available globally. 

One suggestion that is gaining currency is that we waive intellectual property rights — the so-called Trips waiver — to increase global manufacturing capacity. An ostensibly simple solution to a complex problem is always attractive, and US president Joe Biden has expressed his support. Yet several European governments have come out in opposition to the idea on the grounds that it would stifle innovation in the future. Pharmaceutical companies, predictably, are opposed.

If it were to be agreed, and it would have to be agreed by World Trade Organization consensus, a Trips waiver could contribute to improved vaccine supply. But it is very far from being a quick fix. Given the range of political, commercial and logistical challenges involved in creating the necessary infrastructure, it is very hard to see how this approach could increase vaccine supply this year.

There is another solution. At the start of the pandemic, Oxford scientists and leaders had many conversations about how best to ensure a global, distributed, manufacturing network to protect local supply chains during lockdown, minimise the threat of vaccine nationalism and maximise manufacturing output. We considered licensing our product to all-comers, but concluded that there was a better option.

We decided to seek out a partner with the demonstrated capacity to manufacture and distribute a vaccine at scale but, crucially, one that would be prepared to do so without making a profit. We felt that we could not be party to profiteering from a pandemic. We were determined from the outset that if our vaccine proved effective it would not be limited to wealthy countries. As a publicly funded university, much of whose research is conducted internationally, we wanted to develop a vaccine for the world. Our goal was the same as those who argue for a Trips waiver, but we chose to retain the intellectual property in order to attract a commercial partner and get development under way immediately.

In April 2020 we formed a partnership with AstraZeneca, which agreed to produce the two-dose vaccine at cost, forever, in low and middle-income countries. (We agreed that it would be distributed at cost in the developed world for the duration of the pandemic.) Since then, AstraZeneca has worked to transfer technology and support more than 20 manufacturing sites around the world, including the world’s largest vaccine producer, the Serum Institute of India.

Last month, our partnership with AstraZeneca had produced more vaccines than any other developer, about a third of the world’s 1.47bn administered doses, and with the widest distribution both geographically and across global income groups. Today AstraZeneca is administering vaccines around the world for $5 or under per dose and we account for 98 per cent of supplies to Covax.

Our strategy shows that while a Trips waiver is one way to address the terrible inequality in access to vaccines, it is not the only way. Far from being the panacea that people are starting to claim, in some parts of the world it will not come anywhere near soon enough. Now is the time for other companies — especially those which have derived enormous profits from the pandemic — to play their part. Rather than charge $20 per jab, they should financially support Covax, share their vaccine and the means to distribute it, and contribute to the development of infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries.