The World Trade Organisation has called on Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers to do more to ramp up production in developing countries to combat the vaccine supply shortage that is excluding many lower-income nations from access.

In remarks to an event hosted by the UK think tank Chatham House, Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said cooperation on trade, and action at the WTO, would help accelerate vaccine scale-up.

The scarcity of Covid-19 vaccine supplies had led to a situation in which around 60 countries are able to move ahead with vaccination while 130 countries wait as people die, DG Okonjo-Iweala told the Global C19 Vaccine Supply Chain and Manufacturing Summit.

Not only was this morally "unconscionable," she said, it would prolong the pandemic and cause economic harm to all countries. Instead of restricting exports and bidding up prices, she argued, "it is in all of our self-interest to cooperate in dealing with this problem of the global commons."

The Director-General saw cause for hope in the first vaccine deliveries to developing countries by the COVAX facility, the global mechanism for procuring and equitably distributing Covid-19 vaccines. Nevertheless, production and delivery volumes remained too low.

"We have to scale up and scale out Covid-19 vaccine production, particularly in emerging markets and developing countries," she said. Given the years required to build new manufacturing facilities from scratch, increasing production in the short-term means "making the most of existing manufacturing capacity – finding existing sites and turning them around."

Recent experience suggests that repurposing facilities and vetting them for safety and quality can happen in six or seven months, less than half as long as previously thought.

By bringing more production online around the world, she said, vaccine manufacturers would send a signal that they are taking action, and "that people and governments in low- and middle-income countries can expect to get access to affordable vaccines within a reasonable timeframe."

DG Okonjo-Iweala observed that companies in India and elsewhere were already manufacturing Covid-19 vaccines under licence but said that more such arrangements are necessary. – TradeArabia News Service