Dr. Aisling McMahon:

This is a situation where the self-interested, pragmatic, and moral things to do are the same. Unless we get more vaccines to more people globally and equitably, it is not in anyone's interest. It is correct to emphasise that.

My colleague, Dr. Harkin, spoke on the capacity issues. We also know there is capacity because we see the pipeline of vaccines. We see other companies are working on vaccines, both mRNA and other vaccines. Thankfully, there is a great number of them, which indicates capacity.

Given that there has not been voluntary sharing or co-operation, there is a need to share intellectual property. To get that, some countries propose that there would be a waiver or a suspension of intellectual property. The preference would be for companies simply to share but if that is not achieved, there has to be support for mechanisms such as the waiver.

The AIDS HIV crisis is one example of where intellectual property has been relaxed. There was ongoing petitioning from civil society organisations and developing countries for years. Several years were lost while that petitioning was going on because it simply was not being heard. Eventually it led to an announcement and a declaration under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, TRIPS, which is the overarching laws on intellectual property, that public health would also have to be prioritised and that intellectual property would have to be used in a way that was compatible. There are certain measures within that framework that allow, for example, for compulsory licences for a certain period of time which would allow a third party to make a drug without the intellectual property holder's permission. That is perfectly legal and provided for within TRIPS under certain circumstances. It was one of the key mechanisms during the HIV AIDS crisis that facilitated access. It was 7 February 2001, so 20 years ago nearly to the day, that Cipla, the Indian generic company, made the announcement, and it was such a striking announcement, that it could produce HIV-AIDS antiretrovirals for less than $1 a day.

That was a game changer in this context.

Since then, the Medicines Patent Pool, which is the body that works with C-TAP, has produced generic products for more than 141 countries worldwide. On top of this, some of the statistics from the Medicines Patent Pool suggest that those generic products have facilitated 38.75 million patient years of treatment. Those generic products are being facilitated through the pooling of IP and they work for HIV-AIDS but also hepatitis C, TB and various other diseases. The pooling of intellectual property rights is a system that has worked before. C-TAP in particular is, in our view, a key mechanism. Not only does it share IP, but in the vaccine context it shares know-how and know-how is particularly crucial for producing these vaccines. We call on companies and governments to support this.

On the question regarding whether companies have refused to sign up to C-TAP, I cannot answer that. It is not my knowledge that they have refused. I do not have that information to hand. I would encourage companies to consider supporting this and countries to encourage companies to support these initiatives.