How to man­u­fac­ture Covid-19 vac­cines with­out the help of J&J, Pfiz­er or Mod­er­na? Bi­ol­yse sees the dif­fi­cul­ties up close

When Bi­ol­yse, an On­tario-based man­u­fac­tur­er of ster­ile in­jecta­bles, forged a deal with Bo­livia last week to man­u­fac­ture up to 50 mil­lion J&J Covid-19 vac­cine dos­es, the agree­ment kicked off what will prove to be a test case for how dif­fi­cult the sys­tem of com­pul­so­ry li­cens­es is to nav­i­gate.

The first prob­lem: When Bi­ol­yse asked J&J, via a March let­ter, to li­cense its Covid-19 vac­cine, man­u­fac­ture it in Cana­da and pay 5% roy­al­ties on ship­ments to needy, low-in­come coun­tries, J&J re­ject­ed the of­fer, re­fus­ing to ne­go­ti­ate. J&J al­so did not re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment.

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