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