552. We thank South Africa for their submission. The question of access to medicines and medical technologies is particularly relevant in a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
553. Switzerland is committed to ensure global equitable access to COVID-related medical products including vaccines.
554. Considering the global toll which the pandemic has already claimed, all the suffering and the heavy impact on each country's and the world's economy, there is no doubt that the international community and Governments face a unique challenge these days.
555. How can we enable and ensure access to COVID-19 relevant technologies?
556. In spite of the magnitude of the challenge, there is also some light, albeit it may not yet be the light at the end of the tunnel.
557. The pandemic triggered an unprecedented collaboration between major actors who have come together at the international level to do everything possible to contain the crisis and, inter alia, provide the medical technology needed.
558. The intellectual property system is one of the key components leading to access to quality of medical products. The IP system has contributed to making this extraordinary and continued collaboration effort at a global scale possible.
559. Partnerships, whether private-private or public-private, are essential to developing a vaccine and effective treatments against the novel coronavirus.
560. Within a reliable overall legal framework, IP is a foundation for stakeholders, for the public and private actors, it spurs their interaction and makes them willing to share information, knowledge and data, to aliment the global databases, license in and out technology, and to do what is necessary to scale up capacity.
561. The latter will be the crux when it comes to specific COVID-19 technologies and a vaccine in particular, and when ensuring populations' access.
562. Multilateral and global initiatives such as the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access facility (COVAX) and the Gavi COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC) will consider IP issues as part of the negotiation package with private providers.
563. South Africa raises the question of the dimension of TRIPS flexibilities in the current pandemic. We agree with South Africa that the aspect of IP relating to COVID-19 and public health issues certainly go beyond patent rights, and goes beyond medical products in the strict sense.
564. Switzerland acknowledges countries' right to use the TRIPS flexibilities as they were reaffirmed in the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and public health.
565. However, measures disincentivising efforts and investment undertaken by relevant stakeholders, including in R&D, we should clearly avoid.
566. We firmly believe that measures need to build on voluntary approaches and that promoting the use of exceptions and limitations of rights will rather hamper technological, as well as any other kind of, innovation efforts. Voluntary measures, and especially voluntary licenses, are preferable because they are faster, provide legal security and are as such more promising approaches than coercive measures. There is ample proof of success of such partnership-based approach, from looking back before the present year, and a fortiori now during the COVID-19 crisis over the past months in 2020.
567. The various platforms such as the ACT-Accelerator, the COVAX facility (and the Gavi COVAX AMC are important evidence of this. They are the results of this collaborative approach.
568. The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), promoting voluntary licensing, is another example of a platform that successfully builds on voluntary approaches, where several companies manufacture the respective product at reduced price; without weakening the patent law and without compromising the quality of the products.
569. IP protection lies at the heart of a functioning innovation cycle and remains key for the health system. In this time where we need to confront the coronavirus, collaboration will be more important than ever to deliver on the high expectations our people have. IP is part of the solution to overcome this challenge.
570. Besides all the efforts undertaken at the international level and by the international community, governments have an important role to play by investing into their public health system and the infrastructure needed to ensure a fair and equitable access to essential medical products.
