Omicron outbreak turns up heat on EU over vaccine access

Omicron outbreak turns up heat on EU over vaccine access India and South Africa want a waiver on patents, but Brussels is not budging. POLITICO

An outbreak of the new Omicron coronavirus variant in Southern Africa is boosting critics of the EU, who say that Brussels is preventing a quick roll-out of jabs across poor nations by zealously defending vaccine patents.

The European Commission always knew that this was going to be a tough week, in which its trade officials risked being politically isolated as Big Pharma's top allies in a debate over waiving intellectual property on vaccines at a World Trade Organization summit in Geneva.

Ultimately, the WTO summit had to be postponed because of Omicron, but that doesn't mean EU diplomats can breathe a sigh of relief that they are suddenly off the hook. Quite the reverse. Advocates of wider vaccine access are immediately leaping on the new variant and the cancellation of the WTO event as evidence that rich countries cannot hope to beat the virus unless developing nations have blanket vaccination too....

India and South Africa are leading the charge for a sweeping intellectual property waiver on vaccines, but the EU is the biggest trade power — backed by the U.K., Switzerland and Canada — up against the waiver. The debate is a long-running one: Rich nations say patent protection is vital to ensure that Big Pharma continues to pour cash into research and innovation, while developing countries argue that excessive and overlong patents prevent cheap access to cures.

“The rise of the Omicron variant must finally let the European Commission see the light: We won’t get out of this pandemic unless the whole world has access to affordable vaccines," said Sara Matthieu, a lawmaker for the Greens in the European Parliament. "Europe has to urgently put people’s health above pharma profits and support the ... waiver now. The postponement [of the WTO summit] is no excuse for inaction, as variants will continue to emerge.”

Gordon Brown, former British prime minister and now World Health Organization ambassador for global health financing, struck a similar note in an opinion piece in the Guardian. "Our failure to put vaccines into the arms of people in the developing world is now coming back to haunt us. We were forewarned — and yet here we are," he wrote. ...