Public Health Groups & Others Urge Support for WTO Proposal to Increase Access to COVID Tests & Treatments

Washington, D.C. — Public health, labor, faith and other civil society organizations are urging the Biden administration to support a proposal by developing countries at the World Trade Organization (WTO) designed to expand global access to COVID-19 tests and treatments.  Their call comes before a long-awaited U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) report on WTO barriers to COVID diagnostic and therapeutic access is expected to be released on Tuesday, October 17.

“The June 2022 decision on TRIPS and COVID-19 vaccines was very narrow.  It was a temporary, conditional waiver of Article 31.f of the TRIPS, to provide additional by limited flexibility on exports under a non-voluntary authorization to use patented inventions. The decision only applied to one virus, only to vaccines, is temporary, and attached conditions. Despite its limitations, expanding that decision would have some potential value, particularly for COVID therapeutics, where the regulatory pathway is less challenging than is the case for vaccines, and where there is a robust and promising pipeline for both new and repurposed drugs,” said James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International.

“The U.S. has long delayed approving even minimal steps at the World Trade Organization to expand the ability of countries lacking timely, affordable, and sufficient access to COVID-19 tests and medicines to source those essential health products from ‘generic’ suppliers.  Existing and pipeline covid antivirals, owned and controlled by Big Pharma companies, are and will be crucial to preventing disease progression, hospitalization and deaths and the scourge of long covid now affecting tens of millions of people around the globe.  These same medicines could prove essential to responding to new and potentially more deadly variants where treatment will not only help individuals but reduce the risks of transmission to others,” said Brook Baker, senior policy analyst of Health Gap. “The newly released, but long delayed USITC Report should spur the US Trade Representative to immediately support the extension of the June 2022 WTO Decision to diagnostics and therapeutics.”

The groups’ call comes in a joint letter urging U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to announce the United States’ unconditional support for developing countries’ WTO proposal “Decision text on extension of the 17 June 2022 Ministerial Decision to COVID-19 Therapeutics and Diagnostics” (WT/GC/W/860; IP/C/W/694). The letter argues, “This small, but meaningful, step could help developing countries to establish additional sources of supply for COVID tests and medications, and thus help prevent needless disease progression, economic displacement, long COVID and death.”

Organizations on the letter include Oxfam America, Knowledge Ecology International, Public Citizen, Health Gap, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, the Transport Workers Union of America, the United Methodist Church General Board of Church & Society, the Presbyterian Church USA Washington Office of Public Witness, NETWORK, Rethink Trade and the Trade Justice Education Fund.

“Most developing countries are unable to afford monopoly-priced COVID tests and treatments, meaning that large parts of the world continue going without access to life-saving medications that many Americans take for granted,” said Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of the Trade Justice Education Fund.  “We’re hopeful that publication of the USITC report will end the Biden administration’s year-plus request for ‘more time’ to study the question of whether to support developing countries’ WTO proposal.  With COVID-19 still a leading cause of death across the globe, supporting calls for expanded test and treatment access is the right thing to do.”

A full copy of the letter and its signers is online at: https://tradejusticeedfund.org/wp-content/uploads/COVIDTestsandTreatmentsCivilSocietyLetter_101623.pdf

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