Governments Sign Secret Vaccine Deals: Here’s What They Hide

The price per dose? Redacted. The rollout schedule? Redacted. The amount of money being paid up front? Redacted.

And that contract, between the German pharmaceutical company CureVac and the European Union, is considered one of the world’s most transparent.

Governments have poured billions of dollars into helping drug companies develop vaccines and are spending billions more to buy doses. But the details of those deals largely remain secret, with governments and public health organizations acquiescing to drug company demands for secrecy.

Just weeks into the vaccination campaign, that secrecy is already making accountability difficult. The drug companies Pfizer and AstraZeneca recently announced that they would miss their European delivery targets, causing widespread concern as dangerous virus variants spread. But the terms of their contracts remain closely guarded secrets, making it difficult to question company or government officials about either blame or recourse.

Available documents, however, suggest that drug companies demanded and received flexible delivery schedules, patent protection and immunity from liability if anything goes wrong. In some instances, countries are prohibited from donating or reselling doses, a ban that could hamper efforts to get vaccines to poor countries.

Governments are cutting at least three types of vaccine deals: Some are buying directly from pharmaceutical companies. Others are buying through regional bodies like the European Union or the African Union. Many will turn to the nonprofit Covax program, an alliance of more than 190 countries, which is buying from the drug makers with an eye toward making vaccines available worldwide, especially to poor countries free or at reduced cost. Some governments have signed deals with manufacturers and Covax alike.

The United States has secured 400 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, enough for 200 million people, and is close to arranging 200 million additional doses by summer, with options to buy up to 500 million more. It also has advance purchase agreements for more than 1 billion doses from four other companies whose inoculations do not yet have U.S. regulatory approval.

The European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch negotiating on behalf of its 27 member states, has nearly 2.3 billion doses under contract and is negotiating for about 300 million more, according to data collected by UNICEF and Airfinity, a science analytics company.

Covax says it has agreements for just over 2 billion vaccine doses although it, too, is keeping its contracts secret. Only about a dozen of the 92 countries that qualify for vaccine subsidies under the alliance have managed to secure separate deals with individual companies, for a combined 500 million doses.

Despite the secrecy, government and regulatory documents, public statements, interviews and the occasional slip-up have revealed some key details about the vaccine deals. Here is what we learned.

Governments Helped Create Vaccines

Vaccine development is a risky venture. Companies rarely invest in manufacturing until they’re sure their vaccines are effective and can win government approval. That’s part of why it typically takes so long to develop and roll them out.

To speed up that process, governments — primarily the United States and Europe — and nonprofit groups like the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, absorbed some or all of that risk.

The United States, for example, committed up to $1.6 billion to help the Maryland-based company Novavax develop its coronavirus vaccine, according to regulatory filings. CEPI kicked in up to about $400 million in grants and no-interest loans.

Other companies have received even more help. The Massachusetts biotech company Moderna not only used government-developed technology as the foundation of its vaccine, it also received about $1 billion in government grants to develop the drug. In August, the government then placed an initial order for the vaccine for $1.5 billion. The company has said that the project was paid for entirely by the federal government.

These types of arrangements were designed to help companies jump-start manufacturing and cover costs such as clinical testing.

But Companies Keep the Patents

Despite the tremendous taxpayer investments, typically the drug companies fully own the patents. That means that companies can decide how and where the vaccines get manufactured and how much they cost. As the CureVac contract explains it, the company “shall be entitled to exclusively exploit any such” property rights.

This has been a matter of contention for months. A coalition of countries, led by India and South Africa, have petitioned the World Trade Organization to waive intellectual property rights so generic drug makers can begin producing the vaccines. The World Health Organization has endorsed the idea, but it is all but doomed by opposition from the United States and Europe, whose drug makers say patents, and the profits that flow from them, are the lifeblood of innovation.

“Governments are creating artificial scarcity,” said Zain Rizvi of the watchdog group Public Citizen. “When the public funds knowledge that is required to end a pandemic, it shouldn’t be kept a secret.”

Prices Will Vary

One of the key terms of the vaccine contracts — the price per dose — is frequently redacted in the public versions of government contracts. The companies consider this a trade secret. Some drug companies have included clauses in their supply contracts that allow them to suspend deliveries if countries reveal the price.

More at www.nytimes.com

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