International Covid-19 Response: Innovation and Access to Treatment — House of Commons, 2020-11-05
Topic: Health
Wendy Anne Chamberlain (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I beg to move, That this House has considered the UK Government’s role in ensuring innovation and equitable access to treatment within the international covid-19 response I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the time to have this debate. I also thank the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), who is in her place, for co-sponsoring the debate with me. We applied for the debate before the summer, but it arguably could not be more timely, given the encouraging news yesterday from the chief investigator of the University of Oxford covid vaccine trial. Results of the trial are due before the end of the year, and there is a small chance of a vaccine being available by then. I echo the comments of the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus, my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran): that is promising news, but we should not rely on a vaccine alone As has become increasingly clear over the course of this pandemic, a vaccine will not be a silver bullet, and for any vaccine to work effectively, we have to suppress the virus sufficiently within the general population in the first place. None the less, the production of a successful vaccine would be a landmark moment in the fight against covid-19; I recognise and commend that In that regard, the reality in the UK is that we are, in relative terms, fortunate. Our scientists and researchers are leading the battle through their ongoing work. We have deals in place in relation to six of the vaccine candidates currently being developed. The Government have now bought access to 340 million potential future doses of vaccine. That equates to five doses for each person in the UK. When a vaccine candidate’s efficacy is proven, we will be at the global forefront of rolling it out—with, I am sure, a particular focus on our healthcare workers and the most vulnerable in our society, many of whom, including in my constituency of North East Fife, have been shielding or taking extra precautions for some months As we consider our own situation, we also have to recognise that, as things stand, if a vaccine candidate is approved soon, billions of people—two thirds of the world’s population—are likely to have no access to such a vaccine until 2022 at the earliest. While we might live in hope that a vaccine will be with us in the next six months in the UK, for others, it is a matter of years. That is because, right now, access to covid vaccines is a zero-sum game. A limited number of candidates are being manufactured by a small handful of companies only, and between them, they do not have the capacity to produce dosages in the billions required at a global level When the world’s wealthy countries, representing about 13% of the world’s population, bought up access to 50% of future covid vaccine doses, it became very hard for the remaining 6.8 billion people on the planet to obtain the same protections. Almost inevitably, it is less affluent nations, and in particular the most vulnerable countries, that are crowded out. It is important to remember that this is not limited to vaccines, and we are not talking hypothetically about what might happen in the future. It is happening right now, because there are already huge inequalities in access to covid treatments that already exist.