Patently unfair: Can waivers help solve Covid vaccine inequality?

‘The World Trade Organization (WTO) General Council gathered virtually on Monday for the first of two days of talks amid increasing calls from civil society, states and nongovernmental actors to temporarily waive patents for COVID-19 vaccines and other coronavirus-related medical products. Endorsing a waiver on Friday, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “If not now, when?”

‘At the core of the discussion stands a proposal submitted in October by South Africa and India to suspend the WTO’s agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic. The goal is to facilitate the transfer of technology and scientific knowledge to developing countries to ramp up the global production of vaccines and other necessary equipment.’

Read here (Aljazeera, Mar 1, 2021)

Coronavirus fact-check #10: Why “new cases” are plummeting... ‘It's not vaccines, it's not lockdown’

‘Essentially, in two memos the WHO ensured future testing would be less likely to produce false positives and made it much harder to be labelled an “asymptomatic case”.

‘In short, logic would suggest we’re not in fact seeing a “decline in Covid cases” or a “decrease in Covid deaths” at all.

‘What we’re seeing is a decline in perfectly healthy people being labelled “covid cases” based on a false positive from an unreliable testing process. And we’re seeing fewer people dying of pneumonia, cancer or other disease have “Covid19” added to their death certificate based on testing criteria designed to inflate the pandemic.’

Read here (Off Guardian, Feb 26, 2021)

Where did Covid come from? Five mysteries that remain

‘In the wake of the World Health Organization’s investigation, there are still key questions about when, where and how the pandemic began.

1. Was the virus circulating in Wuhan before the first known cases?
2. Was the virus spreading in people outside China before December 2019?
3. What was the role of the Huanan market?
4. Did frozen wild-animal meat have a role in the early spread of the virus?
5. Was the virus circulating in animals in China before the pandemic?

Read here (Nature, Feb 26, 2021)

UN vaccine plan is underway, but problems remain

‘As the coronavirus pandemic exploded worldwide last April, global organizations banded together to help ensure that the world’s most vulnerable people would get vaccines amid the rush for shots. The initiative known as COVAX was formed by the World Health Organization, the vaccines alliance GAVI and a coalition for epidemic innovations called CEPI.

‘COVAX is supposed to make deals to buy vaccines in bulk from drug companies and can also receive donated shots from rich countries. Poorer nations can receive free doses from the initiative — and wealthier ones can also buy from it, as a way of diversifying their supply.

‘But it has been dogged by shortages of cash and supplies as well as logistical hurdles — all while a handful of rich countries raced ahead with their vaccination campaigns.’

Read here (AP, Feb 25, 2021)

I was the Australian doctor on the WHO’s Covid-19 mission to China. Here’s what we found about the origins of the coronavirus

‘As part of the mission, we met the man who, on December 8, 2019, was the first confirmed COVID-19 case; he’s since recovered. We met the husband of a doctor who died of COVID-19 and left behind a young child. We met the doctors who worked in the Wuhan hospitals treating those early COVID-19 cases, and learned what happened to them and their colleagues. We witnessed the impact of COVID-19 on many individuals and communities, affected so early in the pandemic, when we didn’t know much about the virus, how it spreads, how to treat COVID-19, or its impacts.

‘We talked to our Chinese counterparts — scientists, epidemiologists, doctors — over the four weeks the WHO mission was in China. We were in meetings with them for up to 15 hours a day, so we became colleagues, even friends. This allowed us to build respect and trust in a way you couldn’t necessarily do via Zoom or email.

‘This is what we learned about the origins of SARS-CoV-2:

• Animal origins, but not necessarily at the Wuhan markets
• Frozen or refrigerated food not ruled out in the spread
• Extremely unlikely the virus escaped from a lab

Read here (The Conversation, Feb 22, 2021)

Covid-19 infections falling worldwide but WHO warns against apathy

‘Reported daily coronavirus infections have been falling across the world for a month and on Tuesday (Feb 16) hit their lowest since mid-October, Reuters figures show, but health experts warned against apathy even as vaccines are being rolled out worldwide. Falls in infections and deaths coincide with lockdowns and severe curbs on gatherings and movement as governments weigh the need to stop successive waves of the pandemic with the need to get people back to work and children back to school.

‘But optimism over a way out of the crisis has been tempered by new variants of the virus, raising fears about the efficacy of vaccines. "Now is not the time to let your guard down," Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization's technical lead on COVID-19, told a briefing in Geneva.’

Read here (Channel News Asia, Feb 19, 2021) 

How much testing is enough? It’s complicated

‘One of the key measures of a country’s Covid-19 response is how much testing is done. The more cases in the community, the greater the need to expand testing to keep pace with the outbreak. But just how much testing is enough?

‘At a press conference on Tuesday, Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the benchmark set by the World Health Organisation (WHO) is to have at least ten negative tests for every person found to be positive. In other words, the test positivity rate should be no higher than about 10 percent. Any higher, it suggests many cases are being missed.

‘However, several sources including health experts quoted in previous Malaysiakini reports had instead cited a five percent figure as the benchmark to meet. One source, the website "Our World in Data", even cited WHO for setting it as the benchmark. So, who is right? And how did different sources attribute different numbers to WHO?’

Read here (Malaysiakini, Feb 17, 2021)

NY Times lies to say WHO investigators dissatisfied with Chinese cooperation

This story carries the rebuttals on Twitter by two WHO expert-team members, Peter Daszak, British zoologist, and Thea Kølsen Fischer, a Danish epidemiologist. It also provides a background to the story, quoting various findings elsewhere in the world. The earlier studies suggest that the Covid-19 virus could have circulated in Europe before it surfaced in Wuhan. 

Read here (Scoop NZ, Feb 15, 2021)

WHO experts slam NYT for twisting, misquoting their words on virus origins probe

‘WHO experts who recently visited Wuhan slammed the New York Times for twisting their words and casting shadows over the efforts to uncover the origins of the virus, after the newspaper accused China of refusing to hand over sensitive data to WHO experts.

‘The report by New York Times titled “On WHO Trip, China Refused to Hand Over Important Data” accuses China of failing to share important data that may help in identifying the origins of the virus and prevent future outbreaks.

 ‘After the report was published, two WHO experts [Peter Daszak, British zoologist and Thea Kølsen Fischer, a Danish epidemiologist] slammed New York Times for misquoting them in the report to fit its own narrative, with the report casting a shadow over the scientific work of seeking for virus origin.’

Read here (Global Times, Feb 14, 2021)

US and UK in a spat with China over WHO probe on Covid-19

• White House cites 'deep concerns' about WHO Covid-19 report, demands early data from China (read here)
• UK says it shares US concerns over WHO COVID-19 mission to China (read here)
• China fires back at US allegations of lack of transparency over Covid-19 probe (read here)

All reports on Channel News Asia, Feb 14, 2021

On WHO trip, China refused to hand over important data

‘Chinese scientists refused to share raw data that might bring the world closer to understanding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, independent investigators for the World Health Organization said Friday.

‘The investigators, who recently returned from a fact-finding trip to the Chinese city of Wuhan, said disagreements over patient records and other issues were so tense that they sometimes erupted into shouts among the typically mild-mannered scientists on both sides.

‘China’s continued resistance to revealing information about the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, the scientists say, makes it difficult for them to uncover important clues that could help stop future outbreaks of such dangerous diseases.

“If you are data focused, and if you are a professional,” said Thea Kølsen Fischer, a Danish epidemiologist on the team, then obtaining data is “like for a clinical doctor looking at the patient and seeing them by your own eyes.”

‘For 27 days in January and February, the team of 14 experts for the WHO led the mission to trace the origins of the pandemic. Several say their Chinese counterparts were frustrated by the team’s persistent questioning and demands for data.’

Read here (New York Times via Economic Times, India, Feb 13, 2021)

WHO says all hypotheses still open in probe into COVID-19 origins

‘All hypotheses are still open in the World Health Organization's search for the origins of COVID-19, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing on Friday (Feb 12), after Washington said it wants to review data from a WHO-led mission to China.

‘The mission, which spent four weeks in China looking into the origins of the COVID-19 outbreak, said this week that it was not looking further into the question of whether the virus escaped from a lab, which it considered highly unlikely.

‘The previous US administration of President Donald Trump, which left office last month, had said it suspected the virus may have escaped from a Chinese lab, which Beijing strongly denies.’

Read here (Channel News Asia, Feb 13, 2021)

Covid-19 pandemic has shown humanity at its best – & at its worst: WHO DG before the UNICEF Executive Board

‘Ultimately, our fight is not against a single virus. Our fight is against the inequalities that leave children in some countries exposed to deadly diseases that are easily prevented in others; Our fight is against the inequalities that mean women and their babies die during childbirth in some countries because of complications that are easily prevented in others;

‘And our fight is to ensure that health is no longer a commodity or a luxury item, but a fundamental human right, and the foundation of the safer, fairer and more sustainable world we all want.

‘History will not judge us solely by how we ended the COVID-19 pandemic, but what we learned, what we changed, and the future we left our children.’

Read here (IPS News, Feb 11, 2021)

WHO team says theory Covid began in Wuhan lab ‘extremely unlikely’

‘The World Health Organization team that visited Wuhan to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic has all but dismissed a theory that the virus leaked from a laboratory, while giving some credence to China’s focus on the possibility of transmission via frozen food.

‘They said the team’s work did not dramatically change the picture they had before they began, but had added important details to the story. The team found no evidence of widespread circulation of the virus in Wuhan prior to December 2019, and said it was still unclear how it got into the Huanan seafood market, where the virus was initially detected. But, they added, “all the work that has been done on the virus and trying to identify its origin continue to point toward a natural reservoir”.’

Read here (The Guardian, Feb 9, 2021)

Pregnant women get conflicting advice on Covid-19 vaccines

‘Pregnant women looking for guidance on Covid-19 vaccines are facing the kind of confusion that has dogged the pandemic from the start: The world’s leading public health organizations — the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization — are offering contradictory advice. Neither organization explicitly forbids or encourages immunizing pregnant women. But weighing the same limited studies, they provide different recommendations.’

Read here (New York Times, Feb 2, 2021)

Coronavirus: After Wuhan, it’s time for global response reset, says Covid-19 probe chief

‘Covid-19 has exposed global deficiencies in the response to dangerous infectious diseases and the international system will need to be strengthened to raise alerts and deal with future outbreaks, according to Helen Clark, co-head of an international panel investigating the pandemic.

‘Despite the novel coronavirus emerging in a world with rapid communication services, it was notable how slow the global response to the outbreak was after it was first detected in China, said Clark, a former prime minister of New Zealand and one-time head of the United Nations Development Programme.

“Every day counts if you are trying to stop an infectious disease of unknown origin,” she said in an interview with the South China Morning Post. “There just doesn’t seem to be enough happening quickly enough, from the time of first awareness of the cluster onwards, and here we are.

“The WHO didn’t have all the information it needed, and – let’s be fair here, we are still discovering things about Covid-19 every day, we are on a very steep learning curve – but all the more reason, I would think, for applying a precautionary principle. If it smells bad, it may well be bad,” she said, referring to the early days of the pandemic.’

Read here (South China Morning Post, Feb 1, 2021)

Bill Gates, Big Pharma and entrenching the vaccine apartheid

‘It appears that South Africa and India were right. Under the current rules, the vaccine cannot be made quickly or cheaply enough to meet global demand, which vaccines are only going to those countries that can afford it. This is a “catastrophic moral failure”, said the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Some activists have described the situation as a “vaccine apartheid”...

‘Nonetheless, the proposal for a patent waiver has been repeatedly rejected at the WTO by wealthier countries including the European Union, the United Kingdom, US and Switzerland; countries which, as Reuters wryly noted, are “all home to major pharmaceutical companies”. They also all enjoy early access to the vaccine.

‘Nor has South Africa and India’s proposal received support from the most influential non-state actor in global public health: Bill Gates...

‘But despite Gates’ stated commitment to an equitable distribution of the Covid vaccine, he is refusing to back South Africa and India’s calls for a waiver on patents... 

‘This should not come as a surprise: the Gates Foundation has historically been opposed to efforts to reform intellectual property protections for pharmaceutical companies — putting it at odds with other public health NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders (MSF) — and has in fact lobbied for developing countries to impose even stronger protections for drug companies’ patents. This is perhaps because Gates’ own fortune is built on intellectual property, specifically the copy­rights and patents associated with Windows and Microsoft.’

Read here (Mail&Guardian of South Africa, Jan 30, 2021)

WHO chief welcomes EU Council proposal for pandemic preparedness treaty

‘World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday welcomed a proposal by the European Council to negotiate a global treaty on pandemic preparedness, noting it would be the second such treaty after a tobacco pact of 2003. Tedros, addressing the WHO’s Executive Board, referred to the proposal made by European Union Council President Charles Michel in December and said: “As you know we have the Tobacco Convention and if we can make this happen, this would be the second Convention or the second treaty and for a very important area, pandemic preparedness and response.

“All of us have seen how unprecedented this pandemic is, and we have to give it our best. And I think a treaty is the best thing that we can do that can that (bring) the political commitment of member states,” Tedros added.

Read here (Reuters, Jan 20, 2021)

Covid vaccine: WHO warns of ‘catastrophic moral failure’

‘The world faces a "catastrophic moral failure" because of unequal Covid vaccine policies, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was not fair for younger, healthy people in richer nations to get injections before vulnerable people in poorer states. He said over 39 million vaccine doses had been given in 49 richer states - but one poor nation had only 25 doses. Meanwhile, both the WHO and China were criticised for their Covid response.’

Read here (BBC, Jan 19, 2021)

Independent Covid-19 review panel critical of China, WHO delays

‘An independent panel said on Monday (Jan 18) that Chinese officials could have applied public health measures more forcefully in January to curb the initial COVID-19 outbreak, and criticised the World Health Organization (WHO) for not declaring an international emergency until Jan 30.

‘The experts reviewing the global handling of the pandemic, led by former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, called for reforms to the Geneva-based United Nations agency.’ 

Read here (Channel News Asia, Jan 19, 2021)