MSF: Governments must demand pharmaceutical corporations to make all COVID-19 vaccine licensing deals public

• Terms of a deal disclosed show that we cannot rely on pharmaceuticals goodwill to do the right thing, even in a pandemic.

Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) called on governments to urgently demand transparency from pharmaceutical corporations on all COVID-19 vaccine licensing agreements, as well as clinical trial costs and data, especially considering the billions of dollars of public, taxpayer money that have gone towards the development of these potential vaccines.

Public scrutiny of the terms of these deals is critical to ensure equitable and affordable access to these future life-saving vaccines.Pharmaceutical corporations have a very poor track record of transparency across the board – from licensing deals and technology transfers to costs of research and development and clinical trial data – and the little information that has been revealed around AstraZeneca’s not-for-profit promises should be a warning sign that pharma cannot be trusted to act in the interest of public health.

“As long as we don’t know what’s in these deals, pharmaceutical corporations will continue to hold the power to decide who gets access when, and at what price,” said Kate Elder, Senior Vaccines Policy Advisor for MSF’s Access Campaign. “Without decisive action from governments demanding more transparency from companies, equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines is in jeopardy. The public has the right to know what’s in these deals – there is no place for secrets during a pandemic, there is too much at stake.”

The licensing deals struck for a number of other companies racing to develop COVID-19 vaccines also remain cloaked in secrecy, despite unprecedented levels of public funding. Over US$12 billion has been poured into the research and development, clinical trials and manufacture of six front-runner candidate COVID-19 vaccines developed by AstraZeneca/Oxford University (over $1.7 billion) Johnson&Johnson/BiologicalE ($1.5 billion), Pfizer/BioNTech ($2.5 billion), GlaxoSmithKline/Sanofi Pasteur ($2.1 billion), Novavax/Serum Institute of India (nearly $2 billion), and Moderna/Lonza ($2.48 billion).

AstraZeneca has gone so far as to state several times that the development of the vaccine will have no financial implications for the company since “expenses to progress the vaccine are anticipated to be offset by funding by governments and international organisations.”

MSF also urged COVID-19 vaccine developers to disclose clinical trial costs and data. Without this information, it is impossible for people, treatment providers and governments to demand affordable prices and scrutinise critical safety and efficacy data. Given that research and development and manufacturing costs have been largely – or entirely, in the case of AstraZeneca and Moderna – offset by public contributions, the public deserves to see a transparent breakdown of these costs and data.

“Despite repeated assurances from Heads of State that any COVID-19 vaccine will be a global public good, and despite claims that we’re seeing industry at its best, the reality is that up to this point it is clear that pharma cannot be trusted to act in the interest of public health, even in these unprecedented times,” said Roz Scourse, Policy Advisor for MSF’s Access Campaign.

 “Even with billions of dollars of public, taxpayer money paying for these vaccines, and billions of lives at stake, we continue to be left in the dark, leaving us scrambling to determine critical information such as the price and supply of any future COVID-19 vaccines, and what this means for equitable access.”

Governments must be bold at this critical juncture for the health of billions of people, take responsibility for the billions of public dollars that they have handed over for these vaccines, and demand that pharmaceutical corporations urgently make public all licenses, agreements, clinical trial costs and data related to COVID-19 vaccines.