Pub­lic Cit­i­zen ac­cus­es Pfiz­er of build­ing 'patent wal­l' for Covid treat­ment, set­ting up in­equities again

Pub­lic Cit­i­zen has called out Pfiz­er. Again.

The con­sumer ad­vo­ca­cy non­prof­it is­sued a state­ment Fri­day claim­ing the Big Phar­ma is build­ing a patent wall by fil­ing or in­tend­ing to file patent ap­pli­ca­tions in 61 coun­tries, as well as four re­gion­al patent of­fices, for nir­ma­trelvir, a key com­po­nent in Pfiz­er’s Covid-19 treat­ment Paxlovid.

The Med­i­cines Patent Pool and Pfiz­er struck an agree­ment to qual­i­fy gener­ic man­u­fac­tur­ers in 95 coun­tries, many of which are clas­si­fied as low- or low­er-mid­dle-in­come, to pro­duce gener­ic ver­sions of Pfiz­er’s Covid-19 an­tivi­ral. But Pub­lic Cit­i­zen said the deal left out much of the world. Di­rec­tor Bur­cu Kil­ic said, in a call with End­points News Fri­day, that the agree­ment was large­ly a pub­lic re­la­tions move by the Big Phar­ma. The scope of the deal, while in the­o­ry pro­vides eq­ui­table ac­cess, is ac­tu­al­ly a “chick­en or the egg” sce­nario, he said, be­cause many of the coun­tries do not have ease of ac­cess to man­u­fac­ture the drug.

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