Embrace free trade to defeat COVID-19

One strategy worth pursuing? Tearing down trade barriers.

Every country needs access to medical supplies as cheaply as possible. But many governments raise the price of these supplies by levying needless tariffs on medicines, personal protective equipment, and vaccines. Ecuador, for instance, imposes a 55 percent levy on personal protective equipment. And India charges a 10% tax on imported vaccines.

It'd be wise for all public health authorities to push their respective countries towards permanently tariff-free trade, perhaps through a legally binding commitment administered by the World Trade Organization.

Export bans on COVID-related medical supplies are particularly problematic. By late April, 80 countries and separate customs territories had instituted export curbs to preserve supplies for their populations.

While they may secure short-term access to supplies, export bans are extremely harmful. Medicines and medical supplies have global supply chains; export bans cause significant disruption.

Ventilators, for example, have over 700 separate components, sourced from various countries. Medicines also rely on globally distributed manufacturing supply chains, particularly for active pharmaceutical ingredients.

Breaking these chains could result in global shortages. We are already seeing shortfalls occurring in the global supply of medicines unrelated to COVID, such as paracetamol and antibiotics.

There is another way. Singapore and six other Asia-Pacific countries provide a model through their joint commitment to open supply chains, recognising that export bans do more harm than good. Thirty global think tanks recently issued a declaration urging other countries to similarly preserve global supply chains.

COVID-19 is a newly identified disease; innovation will be crucial to a long-term solution. And not just in the invention of new therapeutics and vaccines, but also in their mass manufacture and rapid distribution globally.

The private sector, often in partnership with universities and government research institutes, has responded rapidly. More than 140 experimental coronavirus treatments and vaccines are under development worldwide, including 11 in clinical trials.

Governments can help in two ways.

First, they need to avoid blocking the cross-border flow of epidemiological and clinical data essential to research and development efforts for COVID-19. The bigger and more varied data sets, the more effective and rapid these efforts will be.

Second, governments should not rush to pre-emptively remove intellectual property rights for any new COVID-19 treatments or vaccines that emerge in the coming months.

The World Health Organization discussed a resolution in May which backs the rights of countries to ignore patents in order to gain access to these yet to be invented drugs. 

This is totally misdirected. The real problem is the current paucity of IP for COVID-related medicines. The world needs more companies to join the quest for new treatments and vaccines, but such policies send a strong signal to stay away.

A potential problem with manufacturing and distribution looms too. If governments do co-opt the IP of any successful treatment or vaccine, they face the logistical nightmare of coordinating the manufacture and global distribution of billions of doses.

Cooperation with rights holders, not confiscation, is surely the most sensible strategy.

In the end, solutions to the COVID-19 crisis will come from keeping goods moving freely around the world, and the innovation coming out of numerous labs globally. It's imperative that government help doesn't become a serious hindrance.

Philip Stevens is founder and executive director of Geneva Network, a public policy research and advocacy organization focusing on innovation, trade, and development issues.