Speaker 1: It's Monday, November. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily Dive
Speaker 1: podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America. Fiser
Speaker 1: recently struck a licensing deal with the Medical Patents Pool,
Speaker 1: which in turn construct deals with other manufacturers to make
Speaker 1: generic versions of its COVID anti viral pill for poorer countries.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to its m R and A vaccine,
Speaker 1: Fiser has not been so willing to share the recipe.
Speaker 1: They stand to make thirty six billion dollars in revenue
Speaker 1: this year and have said that they will increase their
Speaker 1: shipments to poor countries at adjusted prices. Stephanie Baker, senior
Speaker 1: writer at Bloomberg News, joins us for the fight over
Speaker 1: profits and the lopsided global supply of vaccines. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us, Stephanie. Thank you. There's been a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting news with Fiser very recently. One of the things
Speaker 1: that popped out was that they just signed a deal
Speaker 1: with a u N back group to allow other manufacturers
Speaker 1: to make its experimental COVID nineteen pill. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of hope behind this that it would bring access to
Speaker 1: this medicine to a large part of the world. They're
Speaker 1: gonna be working with the medicine's patent pool, which would
Speaker 1: let generic drug companies produce this pill for use in
Speaker 1: a bunch of different countries. Great news. On the other
Speaker 1: side of things, when we talk about the actual vaccine,
Speaker 1: the Fiser vaccine, the with beyond tech that they have,
Speaker 1: that is a little trickier. They are holding that a
Speaker 1: little closer to the chest and don't really want to
Speaker 1: let others know that secret recipe and allow others to
Speaker 1: manufacture the vaccine um Their stand to make thirty six
Speaker 1: billion dollars off of that this year. So Stephanie tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about what we're seeing with this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting that Fiser has decided to take this
Speaker 1: different approach with its COVID pill than it's taken with
Speaker 1: the vaccine. You know, we've seen from the past year.
Speaker 1: Ever since they read out their results from their COVID
Speaker 1: vaccine trial, they have kept a tight grip on the
Speaker 1: vaccine manufacturing process, keeping most of it in house through
Speaker 1: facilities and their factories in uh the United States as
Speaker 1: well as in Belgium, and they really resisted calls to
Speaker 1: either do licensed manufacturing deals with other vaccine manufacturers around
Speaker 1: the world. Particularly in low income countries like Africa or Asia,
Speaker 1: and they have opposed this proposal at the World Trade
Speaker 1: Organization to waive intellectual property protections on COVID vaccines and therapeutics,
Speaker 1: and you know, they really just sort of resisted all
Speaker 1: the calls to either share the technology or just do
Speaker 1: more license manufacturing deals with a wider array of producers.
Speaker 1: So I think you might conclude by that that they
Speaker 1: perhaps have learned their lesson from the past year that
Speaker 1: they need to be more inclusive and perhaps have decided
Speaker 1: to take a different approach with the covid pill. Now,
Speaker 1: it could be that the covid pill is potentially easier
Speaker 1: to produce. Vaccines are very complicated. There's something like two
Speaker 1: d and eighty six compos oonents from nineteen countries that
Speaker 1: go into the covid vaccine that Fiser and its German
Speaker 1: partner by in Tech make. I think the covid pill
Speaker 1: is probably a simpler product to outsourced two generic producers.
Speaker 1: That may be one factor at play. Yeah, and until now,
Speaker 1: you know, we we always knew was going to be
Speaker 1: that race to buy up as many doses as you can,
Speaker 1: and we saw that with very much with all the
Speaker 1: higher income countries, and that's exactly how it played out
Speaker 1: for pretty much every vaccine they FISER, for their part,
Speaker 1: has started to make more shipments supporter countries, but they're
Speaker 1: really in dire need of more doses that I think
Speaker 1: from the article. You know, Africa only six percent of
Speaker 1: the people that are fully inoculated as of early November.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's almost nothing right there. So I know
Speaker 1: FISER is starting to increase those shipments, but that's why
Speaker 1: people are asking for, you know, the a waiver of
Speaker 1: the intellectual property. Maybe they can start manufacturing in different places.
Speaker 1: I know they were trying to set up a hub
Speaker 1: in Africa as well, just to help with all of this,
Speaker 1: right the medicine's patent. The group, the u N back
Speaker 1: group that that FISER says it will cooperate with on
Speaker 1: the COVID pill. They're sponsoring this m rn A vaccine
Speaker 1: manufacturing hub in South Africa, but haven't gotten much feedback
Speaker 1: from any of the m RNA producers on that. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this huge push to try to get more vaccines out.
Speaker 1: I mean, FISER did this big deal with the US
Speaker 1: government after a huge amount of pressure on them to
Speaker 1: do more, including the US backing this i P waiver
Speaker 1: proposal at the w t O, which really shocked the
Speaker 1: world that the US, a staunch supporter of intellectual property protections,
Speaker 1: would back something like that. It was a real gut
Speaker 1: punch to the pharmaceutical industry. So after that, Fiser did
Speaker 1: this big deal for a billion doses, selling those at
Speaker 1: cost to the U S Government, and the U S
Speaker 1: Government would in turn turn around and donate those two
Speaker 1: low and middle income countries. But however, only about two
Speaker 1: million of those donated doses will ship by the end
Speaker 1: of this year, so the vast majority of that supply
Speaker 1: will only arrive the middle of next year, possibly towards
Speaker 1: the end. You know, the production is very much prioritized
Speaker 1: to paying customers, mostly in wealthy countries who are rolling
Speaker 1: out these booster campaigns. And that's an interesting part of
Speaker 1: it too, because their CEO basically was talking about how
Speaker 1: they sell this, and they say that they do sell
Speaker 1: it on a sliding scale, right, so higher income countries
Speaker 1: get it at one price, they slash that price a
Speaker 1: little bit more for middle income countries, and for poorer countries,
Speaker 1: they're basically selling it at cost. And part of their
Speaker 1: argument for fiser. They say, well, let's say we do
Speaker 1: give up the I P. What let's say we do
Speaker 1: let other people manufactured. For them to ramp up any
Speaker 1: type of production is going to take them a year
Speaker 1: to eighteen months to do all of that. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: they're saying, we're manufacturing this at a at a fast pace,
Speaker 1: We're going to meet all those numbers by that time. Anyways,
Speaker 1: part of me does agree with that, and I see
Speaker 1: the point that it's it's we're pretty late in the
Speaker 1: game at this point to be trying to start up
Speaker 1: new manufacturing sites that will make a dent in the pandemic.
Speaker 1: As it stands now, it will take maybe not eighteen months. Look,
Speaker 1: Fighter stood up its own manufacturing capacity much more quickly,
Speaker 1: you know, within nine months, um. It possibly even shorter.
Speaker 1: And they know a lot more about the manufacturing process
Speaker 1: now than they did a year ago. So we're in
Speaker 1: a different world now. And the real question is we
Speaker 1: don't know if we're going to the world is going
Speaker 1: to need an annual booster shot. We just don't know
Speaker 1: at this point, So we could be constantly playing catch
Speaker 1: up of needing seven billion doses potentially a year to
Speaker 1: try to get the vast majority of the population with
Speaker 1: immunity to keep the pandemic at bay, and and and
Speaker 1: push it towards an endemic virus that is still there
Speaker 1: but not shutting down economies. Yeah, and that's an interesting
Speaker 1: what you're right, We don't know right now, but it
Speaker 1: seems like it's heading that way. We've seen studies saying
Speaker 1: that the effectiveness of the vaccine of all of them,
Speaker 1: really start waning after a period of time, so you know,
Speaker 1: the need for boosters might be a more commonplace thing.
Speaker 1: One of the interesting things too, that you wrote about
Speaker 1: is just making contracts with other countries and Fightser asking
Speaker 1: for you know, the waving of certain liabilities and all that.
Speaker 1: Can you talk to the speak to that a little bit,
Speaker 1: because that was really interesting. It said that in some
Speaker 1: cases deals are starting to fall apart because of that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This was really fascinating and incredibly difficult to report out.
Speaker 1: It was so secretive. Fighter asked for nondisclosure agreements confidentiality
Speaker 1: agreements with all the countries that it was doing manufacturing
Speaker 1: deals with, so some of the contracts leaked out. We
Speaker 1: got reports from some of the countries that were upset
Speaker 1: with viser's demands for complete indemnity. You know, they wanted
Speaker 1: protection against all liabilities associated with the vaccine, including negligence,
Speaker 1: which some for some countries that felt like a step
Speaker 1: too far. Now you're dealing with legal systems in different
Speaker 1: countries that vary widely, so how do you interpret what
Speaker 1: quote unquote negligence means. But you know, they did not
Speaker 1: want to be held liable for mistakes made in the
Speaker 1: manufacturing process or doses that perhaps spoiled along the way.
Speaker 1: And to some extent, you can understand that they're rushing.
Speaker 1: We're in the middle of a pandemic. It's a it's
Speaker 1: an emergency. You don't want to necessarily have pharmaceutical companies
Speaker 1: not step up to the plate because they're worried that
Speaker 1: they might be held liable because they're rushing, and you know,
Speaker 1: mistakes do happen. But this did hold up negotiations in
Speaker 1: a number of countries South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, you know
Speaker 1: who pushed back on the kind of demands that fires
Speaker 1: are made, including in some cases they were asking to
Speaker 1: put up collateral. How are you going to pay for
Speaker 1: us and pay for any claims related to the vaccine
Speaker 1: if something should go wrong. That includes you know, adverse
Speaker 1: events from you know, individuals who we know the vaccines
Speaker 1: are very safe, but there are occasionally in cases where
Speaker 1: you know, if someone reacts badly, and there there's compensation
Speaker 1: programs set up in the United States to deal with that.
Speaker 1: They wanted to replicate those kind of protections worldwide, and
Speaker 1: most countries didn't have a system set up for that,
Speaker 1: a sort of vaccine compensation scheme, and that's what they
Speaker 1: were trying to replicate. So they had huge sway over
Speaker 1: you know, new laws being written in these countries to
Speaker 1: set up these sort of schemes, and you know that
Speaker 1: that caused delays. We're talking about Fiser and you know
Speaker 1: they've had nothing but first and a lot of this.
Speaker 1: You can call them probably the the global front and
Speaker 1: runner in this COVID vaccine race. How have other vaccine
Speaker 1: makers fared in all this and sharing this and you
Speaker 1: know what we're talking about getting as many people across
Speaker 1: the world now access to these vaccines. Maderna Johnson and Johnson,
Speaker 1: astros Eneka some other big players in this. How have
Speaker 1: they fared with all this and trying to share their
Speaker 1: recipes for this? Right? So, Maderna, for On, a small
Speaker 1: biotech company that had never produced a license drug before
Speaker 1: and you know, produced this fantastic mRNA vaccine. But they
Speaker 1: employed about a thousand people. There are tiny company that is. Um.
Speaker 1: It was kind of incredible that they stood up the
Speaker 1: amount of manufacturing that they did given how small they are.
Speaker 1: They were aiming for a billion doses by the end
Speaker 1: of this year. So far they supplied a little over
Speaker 1: fifty million. I believe off the top of my head,
Speaker 1: I think they may fall slightly short of their target
Speaker 1: of a billion doses by the end of the year.
Speaker 1: And you know, they when this w t O proposal
Speaker 1: to wave IP rights came up, they said, look, we're
Speaker 1: not going to enforce our our patents. UM. During the pandemic,
Speaker 1: they were sort of a bit hands off. It was,
Speaker 1: you know, it's hard to replicate these vaccines, so that
Speaker 1: was an easy thing to say. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: and they were charging quite high prices. On the flip side,
Speaker 1: you have astras Enka, which promised their vaccine would be
Speaker 1: not for profit for the world and did these licence
Speaker 1: manufacturing deals, including with the world's largest vaccine manufacturer in India.
Speaker 1: The ceremon Institute, and the vast majority of their doses
Speaker 1: they've produced about the same amount as fies are two billions,
Speaker 1: just over two billion. Vast majority of their doses have
Speaker 1: gone to low and middle income countries. A lot of
Speaker 1: big chunk of that is because of India, which threw
Speaker 1: up it's the gates and refused to allow the vaccines
Speaker 1: produced in India to leave the country, as you were called.
Speaker 1: They had a terrible time with the pandemic with a
Speaker 1: wave of COVID deaths, and then they've recently said that
Speaker 1: they will start charging a bit more to high income countries.
Speaker 1: They've abandoned that that not for profit pledge, which was
Speaker 1: a sad but probably inevitable move given that they had
Speaker 1: given had so many problems with the vaccine rollout and
Speaker 1: gotten such bad press on for a number of different reasons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and as they mentioned, you know, as the pandemic does
Speaker 1: turn endemic, you know this, we're going to probably see
Speaker 1: a lot of this and we'll see how fiser affairs
Speaker 1: and all of this. They're gonna hold it pretty close.
Speaker 1: There's obviously stands to a lot of money to be made,
Speaker 1: but it's very very complex. As we've been talking about,
Speaker 1: so we'll see how Fiser fares with all of that.
Speaker 1: Stephanie Baker, Senior writer at Bloomberg News, thank you very
Speaker 1: much for joining us. Thank you. I'm Oscar Ramirez and
Speaker 1: this has been reopening America. Don't forget effort today's big
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