The mem­ber coun­tries of the World Trade Or­ga­ni­za­tion ne­go­ti­at­ed late in­to last night, fi­nal­ly of­fer­ing up a com­pro­mised and wa­tered-down way for some low-in­come coun­tries to waive the in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty around cer­tain Covid-19 vac­cine in­gre­di­ents and man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es, po­ten­tial­ly paving the way for com­pul­so­ry li­cens­ing for these vac­cines.

While on­ly in ef­fect ini­tial­ly for five years, the waiv­er would hy­po­thet­i­cal­ly al­low low-in­come coun­tries to by­pass cer­tain Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na patents to pro­duce more Covid-19 vac­cines.

“The TRIPS waiv­er com­pro­mise will con­tribute to on­go­ing ef­forts to decon­cen­trate and di­ver­si­fy vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty, so that a cri­sis in one re­gion does not leave oth­ers cut off,” WTO di­rec­tor-gen­er­al Ngozi Okon­jo-Iweala said in a speech to­day.

But the de­ci­sion to al­low the waiv­er — af­ter more than a year of ne­go­ti­a­tions — comes at a time when coun­tries like Switzer­land and else­where are al­ready hav­ing to dump mil­lions of dos­es in the garbage be­cause they can’t do­nate them be­fore ex­pi­ra­tion. And it re­mains to be un­der­stood if any gov­ern­ments will ac­tu­al­ly seek to use this waiv­er in its cur­rent form.

Jamie Love, di­rec­tor of KEI who pub­lished an analy­sis on the waiv­er this morn­ing, told End­points News he’s “pret­ty con­fi­dent no one will” use the waiv­er right now, as it is “on­ly an ex­cep­tion for ex­ports un­der a com­pul­so­ry li­cense from de­vel­op­ing coun­tries mi­nus Chi­na. There are no vac­cines oth­er than Mod­er­na now us­ing com­pul­so­ry li­cens­es.”

And while the text of the agree­ment “was ac­tu­al­ly im­proved a fair amount this week,” Love said, “it’s still most­ly about prece­dent, and won’t have any ef­fect for years if at all.”

Oth­ers who were ad­vo­cat­ing for the IP waiv­er ini­tial­ly, and want­ed it to ex­tend to ther­a­peu­tics and oth­er Covid-re­lat­ed med­ical prod­ucts, and those who have been op­posed to it the en­tire way (PhRMA and oth­er in­dus­try groups), were not hap­py with the fi­nal re­sult.

“Rather than fo­cus on re­al is­sues af­fect­ing pub­lic health, like solv­ing sup­ply chain bot­tle­necks or re­duc­ing bor­der tar­iffs on med­i­cines, they ap­proved an in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty waiv­er on Covid-19 vac­cines that won’t help pro­tect peo­ple against the virus,” PhRMA said in a state­ment this morn­ing.

Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders/Médecins Sans Fron­tières sim­i­lar­ly took is­sue with the waiv­er, say­ing in a state­ment, “The waiv­er that was agreed to con­tains a po­ten­tial­ly harm­ful set of clar­i­fi­ca­tions of the ex­ist­ing pub­lic health safe­guards and a lim­it­ed ex­cep­tion for the pro­ce­dure of us­ing com­pul­so­ry li­cens­ing for ex­port of Covid-19 vac­cines by el­i­gi­ble coun­tries for a du­ra­tion of five years.”

US Cham­ber of Com­merce Glob­al In­no­va­tion Pol­i­cy Cen­ter SVP Patrick Kil­bride al­so added:

Mis­guid­ed pro­pos­als to un­der­mine in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights would set a harm­ful prece­dent with­out solv­ing any of the ac­tu­al prob­lems pre­vent­ing more wide­spread vac­ci­na­tion. Waiv­ing in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights would on­ly hob­ble the in­no­va­tion that is crit­i­cal to im­prov­ing lives and rais­ing liv­ing stan­dards glob­al­ly.

Two weeks ago, Biohaven hit an all-time high in weekly Nurtec prescriptions. CEO Vlad Coric attributes at least some of that success to a new interactive Twitter campaign that encourages patients to free their feed of potential migraine triggers.

Earlier this month, Biohaven in partnership with Twitter launched the #RelieveYourFeed campaign that allows users to customize their app settings based on their migraine triggers.

Over the past few months, oncologists have been talking a lot about the ASCO conference. Not surprising considering its import and the study data presented, but what may be less expected is the second most talked about topic of health equity.

That’s according to data from The Harris Poll and the new expert network the researcher is building out. While the company has been doing deep data dives into specific health issues or conditions for pharma clients, it’s now monitoring influencer networks of therapy area specialists to find out what experts are really thinking about.

Earlier this year, Novartis touted its radioligand as a major piece to counter competition in the cancer space. However, the physical production of its products has had anything but a smooth ride.

In May, Novartis had to suspend production of Lutathera and Pluvicto, its two primary radiotherapies. According to the company, this was done out of an abundance of caution as a result of potential quality issues identified in its manufacturing. The production suspension impacts the commercial and clinical trial supply of the products.

The rise of pharma environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts in the past two years has been meteoric as investors turn their attention to sustainable funding. However, investors aren’t the only ones watching. Patients are beginning to tune into pharmas’ ESG promises too.

Patient advocacy groups familiar with ESG regard it as an important issue and want to be included in helping pharma companies set ESG policies and targets, according to a new report from PatientView. That’s quite different from what the investment community wants across a variety of Gartner’s defined financial, competitive, strategic and perception goals.