Author: Free The Vaccine

Check out the work of our Season 2 Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 participants from Australia in the following video!

Last week, the U.S. government finally released the contract it made with Moderna in August for vaccine manufacturing and distribution. As with most documents of public interest released by this administration, the contract is heavily redacted.

Moderna Therapeutics holds one of the current vaccine candidates that has entered Phase III testing. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had entered a contract with Moderna back in August as part of Operation Warp Speed. The contract with Moderna, worth approximately $1.5 billion USD, would allow for the United States to secure the first 100 million doses of the vaccine, along with an option to buy up to 400 million more doses. These contracts have been created with many pharmaceutical companies despite the fact that data about safety and efficacy has not been finalized yet, as all the clinical trials are still running. The terms and conditions of the contract have not been extensively disclosed, leaving the public in the dark to wonder important details about cost and access. The contract released is 53 pages, only of which 14 are unredacted.

NPR reported that “while the publicly posted Moderna contract includes previously unknown details, extensive redactions leave the public in the dark about some of the company’s obligations as well as the extent of protections for taxpayers.” Keep reading here.

For almost an entire year now, all eyes have been focusing on research to find a safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19. What are these clinical trials really measuring?

Peter Doshi of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) reports that the current Phase III vaccine trials are not inherently designed to prove the two things that an antiviral vaccine is supposed to do. First, it should “reduce the likelihood you will get severely ill and go to the hospital” and secondly, it must “prevent infection and therefore interrupt disease transmission.”

Nevertheless, none of the current Phase III trials are set up to detect reductions in serious outcomes, including the number of hospital admissions, the use or necessity of intensive care, or deaths. The vaccines are also not being studied to see if they can interrupt the transmission of the virus.

So what are the current vaccines really doing? Read more from the BMJ here.

According to Global Citizen, researchers from the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) in South Africa have recently launched a trial to test to see if a vaccine given for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) can serve as an effective defense against COVID-19.

While the new effort is not an attempt to hinder current vaccine research, scientists are hoping to use it to protect individuals, like frontline healthcare workers, who have a higher probability of exposure to the vaccine than most.

Countries involved in this research effort include South Africa, Ghana, Uganda, USA, UK, and more. Read more about the vaccine trial here.

Throughout the past few weeks, you may have heard us throwing around the term “vaccine nationalism.”  What we at the People’s Vaccine are fighting for is a safe and effective vaccine for everyone, everywhere. Vaccine nationalism defeats this purpose: this is why. 

Vaccine nationalism refers to when countries make efforts to secure supplies of vaccines for their own residents and citizens before they can be made available to other countries. For example, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union have engaged in billions of dollars worth of deals with Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca, pharmaceutical companies holding promising vaccine candidates, before the vaccines were even proven to be safe and/or effective. These deals are meant to secure vaccine doses for each respective country, without paying much attention to the impact that these practices can have on countries who cannot afford to give billions of dollars to pharmaceutical companies.

A briefing from CBC News referred to the dangers of vaccine nationalism as having the potential to prolong the pandemic by inhibiting the ability of the vaccine to reach individuals who need it most. The Chief of the World Health Organization Tedros Ghebreyesus said on Thursday that vaccine nationalism must be prevented, given that “sharing finite supplies strategically and globally is actually in each country’s interest.” Countermeasures to vaccine nationalism have risen, a prominent one being the COVAX Facility, a global effort to distribute the shots globally while making sure that low- and middle-income countries receive adequate doses as well. 

Read more here if you are interested in learning about either vaccine nationalism or the COVAX Facility. 

As we get (hopefully) closer to a safe and effective vaccine, conversations about “intellectual property” rights and access to the COVID-19 vaccine around the world continue to fill the news. Whether you are taking part in the Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 campaign or cheering on from the sidelines, experiencing the dilemmas and distrust that plague the world of vaccine nationalism can be disheartening.

From grueling statistics about the global mortality rate of COVID-19 to international conflicts, it can be exhausting to keep up with everything that is happening in the world– so we are here to do what we do. Give you some good (and hopeful) news. 

It is always encouraging to hear of other entities who are pushing for the same cause that we are. After all, what we are asking for is simple: a vaccine funded by the people should be available to all people, everyone and everywhere. Especially given the scale of the pandemic and its disproportionate burden on low- and middle- income countries (LMICs,) it is important that we advocate for their access rights in addition to the right to access a COVID-19 vaccine. India and South Africa reached out to The World Trade Organization, a supranational organization that deals with international trade, to demand that monopolies don’t not stand in the way of access in LMICs. 

We won’t take you through all the details, but point #3 states: 

If you are interested in reading more, access the whole document from the World Trade Organization here. 

Around the world, there is a call for solidarity and support. You can see the importance of our work at Free the Vaccine for COVID-19– fighting for a People’s Vaccine everywhere is the only way to make sure that we can truly mitigate the effects of this pandemic. Keep educating yourself– use your voice and your art and your platform to demand a People’s Vaccine with us.