2,739,282 of 3,100,000 signatures

Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, Chuck Triano, Pfizer, Investor Relations, Jens Spahn, German Minister for Health, Sylke Maas, Ph.D., BioNTech VP Investor Relations & Strategy and Ugur Sahin, Founder and CEO of BioNTech

Petition

We call on the European Union to make the COVID-19 vaccines and treatments accessible to everyone, everywhere. The EU should:

Release all patents and licences of the anti-pandemic vaccines and treatments;
Make public all contracts between public EU authorities and pharmaceutical companies;
Ensure that vaccines and treatments are affordable and accessible for all.

Why is this important?

**Update June 2021**

Germany is still blocking the proposal of a temporary waiver on Covid vaccine patent laws, while other countries like France are still on the fence. Now is the moment to increase the pressure ahead of important meetings of the G7 and the WTO in days. If they agree to this proposal, we can end this pandemic sooner so everyone is safe.

*****************

What matters more: saving lives by getting as many COVID vaccines to as many people as quickly as possible? Or protecting the profits of pharmaceutical companies?

Pharma giants like BioNTech-Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca own the vaccine recipes and can’t produce for the whole world fast enough. But they keep protecting their monopolies and their profits, ahead of people’s lives.

But it does not have to be like this. Governments, including Europe, are discussing a global plan to speed the vaccine roll-out in suspending patents for COVID-19 vaccines.

Let’s make it happen! Add your name to support this appeal!

*****************

The lack of vaccine access in countries like India is accelerating the loss of life and human suffering. As cases spiral out of control, open production can help ensure sufficient access to a vaccine and bring an end within sight. With new variants of the virus developing the longer it circulates, a slow rollout is only making matters worse. That means that nobody is safe from Covid-19 until everyone is safe.

Earlier this year, the United States’s backed proposals by South Africa and India at the World Trade Organisations call to remove temporarily lift the patents on COVID-19 vaccines until the pandemic is over. This call has the support of over 100 developing countries, the Pope and over 100 world leaders and Nobel laureates.

Governments are meeting in days, so join us to create a wave of public support to pass this proposal and make COVID vaccines and treatments available to everyone, everywhere.

Captain Sir Tom Moore was 100 years old. He was knighted last year after raising £38.9 million for the NHS during the pandemic. He died on 2 February 2021, after testing positive for COVID-19. [1]

Since then it’s been hard to learn the names, faces and stories of those we have lost. Instead we are presented with numbers. Over 100,000 deaths in the UK. Hundreds of thousands more across Europe, and over 2 million worldwide. [2]

So as the vaccines fight continues, we watch companies like AstraZeneca hold way too much power on who gets them. It’s easy to forget what is at stake. A sister. A friend. A grandfather.

Vaccines are the single best chance of survival for millions. We need to be able to produce them more widely and we need them to be affordable to get out of this pandemic. The first step is to make the rights to produce the vaccines, the patents, public.

It’s possible to do, but standing up to big pharma and their profits is not easy. Charles Michel, President of the EU Council, has just joined the call of some MEPs for AstraZeneca’s patent to be made public. [3] Let’s make sure he puts his words into action.

References:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/02/captain-sir-tom-moore-dies-at-100-after-testing-positive-for-covid
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/cases-2019-ncov-eueea https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52676411 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-51235105
https://www.politico.eu/article/charles-michel-says-eu-could-invoke-urgent-measures-response-coronavirus-vaccine-shortfall/

Image source; Tim Reckmann, Flickr, here.

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By sending emails to Chancellor Merkel and BioNTech CEO this week, we can make sure they know that public opinion, which goes far beyond Germany, is not on their side.

Ask them to support a people's vaccine - a real project for humanity.

Please write your own personalised message – they will appreciate your personal message much more than a copy-pasted comment!

If you wish to, you can also use the following key arguments to make your message stronger:

You say that BioNTech is already on track to make billions of vaccines in 2021 so we just need to let these companies get on with it. But this is wildly exaggerated. The reality is that in 2020 corporations produced just 4% of their projected doses. On current trends, production rates would have to increase 8-14 fold to meet the projections claimed by big pharma by the end of the year. And it’s still the case that the vast bulk of these doses have already been promised to rich countries.
You say that removing intellectual property could lead to unsafe vaccines being produced. But all vaccine producers wherever they are in the world must be approved by national and international regulatory authorities. Safe, qualified and professional vaccine manufacturers exist on every continent. And many qualified, safe and certified manufacturers across the world are ready to produce these vaccines but they cannot because pharmaceutical industries like BioNTech, refuse to share the vaccine know-how, despite the catastrophic loss of life.

To:

Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany

Chuck Triano, Pfizer, Investor Relations

Jens Spahn, German Minister for Health

Sylke Maas, Ph.D., BioNTech VP Investor Relations & Strategy

Ugur Sahin, Founder and CEO of BioNTech

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