As Pfiz­er/BioN­Tech and Mod­er­na re­main re­luc­tant to share IP or pro­vide tech trans­fer to ex­pand the man­u­fac­ture of their life-sav­ing mR­NA vac­cines for Covid-19, the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Man­u­fac­tur­ers & As­so­ci­a­tions on Tues­day un­veiled a new plan, build­ing off those Covid suc­cess­es, to en­sure more eq­ui­table pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness.

The plan, known as the “Berlin De­c­la­ra­tion,” will be brought be­fore G7 and G20 coun­tries soon and pro­pos­es to re­serve an al­lo­ca­tion of the re­al-time pro­duc­tion of drugs, vac­cines and di­ag­nos­tics for dis­tri­b­u­tion to pri­or­i­ty pop­u­la­tions in low­er in­come coun­tries, as de­ter­mined by health au­thor­i­ties dur­ing pan­demics.

José Manuel Bar­roso, Gavi chair and CO­V­AX co-chair, said re­gard­ing the pro­pos­al:

We saw ef­fec­tive in­no­va­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing scal­ing up with this pan­dem­ic; but we al­so saw the chal­lenges we had to over­come to get the vac­cines to all those who need­ed them.  The in­dus­try’s com­mit­ment to re­serve part of pro­duc­tion of vac­cines and treat­ments at re­al time for vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions in low-in­come coun­tries pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty to work to­geth­er strate­gi­cal­ly to forge a new so­cial con­tract. I hope that po­lit­i­cal lead­ers will do their part and en­gage with in­dus­try on how to make this work.

The de­c­la­ra­tion will be based on com­mit­ments and con­tri­bu­tions from a glob­al con­sor­tia of pub­lic, pri­vate and char­i­ta­ble com­pa­nies, the com­pa­nies said in a state­ment, as many in the West­ern world re­ceived boost­ers be­fore those in low­er-in­come coun­tries re­ceived their first Covid-19 vac­cine dos­es.

That lack of eq­ui­ty re­gard­ing ear­ly Covid-19 boost­er dos­es even led two high-pro­file FDA vac­cine lead­ers to leave the agency last Au­gust.

But more re­cent­ly, low-in­come coun­tries have de­clined large do­na­tions of vac­cines, and mil­lions of dos­es have end­ed up in the trash as ex­pi­ra­tion dates neared with­out any­one to use them.

“For this po­ten­tial­ly life-sav­ing con­cept to be­come re­al­i­ty, we will need to work with G7, and lat­er this year in Bali with G20 to flesh out how to make it work,” Jean-Christophe Tel­li­er, IF­P­MA pres­i­dent and CEO of UCB, said in a state­ment. “The re­ward if suc­cess­ful will help shape a fu­ture where every­one has a chance to be bet­ter pro­tect­ed from the threat of pan­demics from the out­set, no mat­ter where they live.”

Gov­ern­ments should com­mit to un­re­strict­ed trade and no ex­port bans across the sup­ply chain for vac­cines, ther­a­peu­tics and di­ag­nos­tics, the Berlin De­c­la­ra­tion says. And it calls for “ex­pe­dit­ed process­es for im­port and ex­port dur­ing a pan­dem­ic to help sup­port fast and ef­fi­cient glob­al dis­tri­b­u­tion.”

Rising monkeypox cases have put the US on high alert as it announces a national health emergency, which grants the government more power in its response.

The news comes as Bavarian Nordic continues to fill orders for its Jynneos vaccine and other companies – including Moderna – consider jumping into the vaccine race. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the US has allowed around 20 million doses of smallpox vaccine in its stockpile to expire.

Forget buyer’s remorse, Pfizer is likely feeling pretty good about its $11.6 billion Biohaven takeover deal following reports of a 57% sales boost for migraine med Nurtec.

Biohaven reported in Q2 results on Friday that it’s cleared the necessary antitrust hurdles to move forward with the sale of its calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) assets to Pfizer. However, because the company is “focused on workstreams related to the closing” of the deal, it did not host a call with analysts and investors.