A few months ago, a Covid-19 vaccine developed by Canada-based Medicago was rejected by the World Health Organization (WHO) simply because 21% of Medicago was owned by Philip Morris International (PMI). PMI has a stake in Medicago since 2008, however, in July 2020, Medicago announced plans to distance itself from the tobacco company. The other 79% of Medicago is held by Japanese pharmaceutical giant Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp. (MTPC).
WHO rejected the application for the vaccine because of its 2005 treaty requiring no involvement with any company that produces or promotes tobacco-based products but left the door open to exploring different policy options for health products linked to the tobacco industry. “WHO is currently holding discussions on how to address a general trend of the tobacco industry investing in the health industry,” the organization said.
A Health Canada spokesperson told Reuters it believes it was in compliance with the WHO tobacco treaty, which “does not preclude the Government of Canada from working with Medicago on vaccine development and procurement to ensure that a ready and effective supply of vaccines is available for its population.”
Calling Medicago’s vaccine “an extraordinary example of success that we’ve seen in Canada in biomanufacturing, research, and development,” Canada’s minister of health, Jean-Yves Duclos, said that it is important their technology and vaccine platform is able to be used in the future, adding, “So we can move beyond that initial decision, this was a decision based on emergency use…there are other avenues that we can use to head in the right direction.”
Hypocrisy at its finest
A PMI spokesperson told Reuters that WHO's position was in opposition to its own call to accelerate vaccinations around the world. "Emergency use authorization of a Covid-19 vaccine has absolutely nothing to do with tobacco control," the spokesperson said. "WHO policies should focus on accelerating medical progress and innovation."
PMI’s Japanese arm further emphasized these points, telling The Asahi Shimbun that “the mere suggestion of not approving a Covid-19 vaccine that could save lives is extremely regrettable because it runs counter to the WHO’s efforts to promote vaccinations around the world,” adding that WHO should focus on endeavors that advance medicine and innovations, not hamper access to medical products.
WHO’s rejection has stopped Canada from being able to donate the Covifenz vaccine to other countries and limit their donations to COVAX, the global-equity vaccine equity program.
However, that does not spell the end for Covifenz as Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp. (MTPC) plans to apply for the use of the vaccine in Japan this summer, saying WHO’s decision will have no bearing on Covifenz's Japanese licensing process. And it should not, seeing that WHO’s decision to reject even looking at Covifenz’s application is based on its anti-tobacco dogma and not on the vaccine’s science or efficacy.
Medicago’s two-dose vaccine was authorized by Health Canada in February for adults aged 18-64. Early clinical trials showed that Covifenz was more than 70% effective at preventing Covid-19 infections and 100% effective against severe illness. In a recent New England Journal of Medicine article, Dr. Brian Ward and his team at Medicago revealed that phase-III trials found that Covifenz has 69.5% efficacy against any symptomatic disease caused by five pre-Omicron variants, and a post-hoc analysis indicated that the vaccine is 78.8% effective against moderate-to-severe disease, with no severe cases in the vaccine group.
Some may question if we even still need another Covid-19 vaccine at this point. If we were to consider WHO’s goal to vaccinate 70% of the world’s population against Covid-19 by mid-2022 and that, in WHO’s own words in its Strategy to Achieve Global Covid-19 Vaccination by mid-2022, “…globally, vaccine access is highly inequitable with coverage ranging from 1% to over 70%, depending largely on a country’s wealth,” then the answer should be yes. A new vaccine which is produced on a new technology platform that could be an alternative choice for those who cannot or do not want to be vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine should come in handy. A new vaccine which can be more easily transported due to not requiring extreme coldchain procedures for storage should be a useful option that could help the world population, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
But, to WHO, these benefits of a new vaccine such as Covifenz obviously do not hold up against the agency’s biased and questionable anti-tobacco position, which dismisses a vaccine with life-saving potential merely because the company that developed it had the audacity to be partly-owned by a tobacco company.