U.S. to share some coronavirus technologies with World Health Organization

Under the plan, some technologies now being developed by the National Institutes of Health will be licensed to WHO’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool, the people said. The technologies will also be sub-licensed to the United Nations-backed Medicines Patent Pool.

The policy is not intended to apply to the vaccines and therapeutics that have been developed by private companies and are currently in the U.S. market, the people said.

The United States is not expected to share NIH-developed technology that was used by Moderna, the vaccine maker that worked closely with the U.S. government in its messenger RNA vaccine. Foreign countries and developers have long petitioned for access to Moderna’s technology and know-how, saying that it would allow them to more quickly replicate their own versions of Moderna’s vaccine.

Sharing the technologies behind NIH-devised coronavirus diagnostics, treatments and vaccines is intended to allow other nations and developers to replicate the manufacturing process. As a result, officials expect the decision to more quickly build a global stockpile of supplies to combat the pandemic.

The Biden administration’s plan will be announced Thursday morning by Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra at an event that he is hosting with foreign health ministers, the people said.

WHO, dozens of foreign countries and public health advocates have spent nearly two years urging the United States and other wealthy nations to share the technologies linked with their coronavirus vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics.

Spain in Nov. 2021 announced that it would share the technology behind a coronavirus antibody test with WHO, the first significant donation to the pool, known as C-TAP.

U.S. participation in the WHO pool could jump-start global donations of such technologies, officials and advocates said.

“The U.S. government sets the tone for country relationships toward the pharmaceutical industry, as well as this sort of global cooperation,” said Peter Maybarduk, who oversees the global medicine program at Public Citizen, an advocacy organization. “And by taking the publicly owned inventions, and working with WHO to make them available to humanity … that is a clear and powerful demonstration of what governments can do.”