On 14 February 2022, Amnesty International released a new report that made an assessment of the leading Covid-19 vaccine developers. This report is an update on Amnesty International’s September 2021 report A double dose of inequality: Pharma companies and the Covid-19 vaccines crisis. It reveals that just over 4% of those living in low-income countries had been fully vaccinated by the end of last year.
Ten billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines were produced last year, more than enough to reach the 40% target of global vaccination set by the World Health Organization (WHO) for the end of 2021. Despite urgent calls to ensure the equal distribution of Covid-19 vaccines in 2021, pharmaceutical companies tragically failed to rise to the challenge of a once-in-a-century global health and human rights crisis, this report concludes. Instead, they monopolized technology, blocked and lobbied against the sharing of intellectual property, charged high prices for vaccines and prioritized supplies to wealthy countries.
Amnesty’s report also shows how these companies don’t share their intellectual property, knowledge and technology, putting in place obstacles to fair vaccine access, as well as actively lobbying against the relaxation of intellectual property rights. Hence, Amnesty International is calling on companies to share intellectual property by issuing open and non-exclusive licences or participating in the Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), established to support the sharing of open and non-exclusive licences, publicly disclose all terms and conditions, and price vaccine doses so profit does not stand in the way of access to Covid-19 vaccines.