Surgeon General Says Covid-19 Vaccine Waiver Is a Step to Increase Supply

Dr. Murthy said during The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival that the three vaccines used in the U.S. have so far proven to be effective against severe infection and death when it comes to variants like the more transmissible B.1.1.7 variant first identified in the U.K. But he said more research was needed to determine the level of protection those vaccines offer against B.1.617, which originated in India and was classified this week by the World Health Organization as a global “variant of concern.”

“We are in a race against these variants,” he said, “and really, right now it’s about vaccines versus variants. So the quicker we can get people vaccinated, the more we will bring infection rates down, and the fewer variants that will ultimately develop.”

Dr. Murthy said a temporary waiver of intellectual property provisions to allow developing nations to produce Covid-19 vaccines was one pathway to have the necessary supply and distribution system to vaccinate people around the world. The Biden administration said last week it would support a proposal for such a waiver making its way through the World Trade Organization, prompting some pushback from European Union leaders and Republicans in Washington.

Dr. Murthy said he didn’t think a waiver would discourage companies from developing vaccines in a future pandemic. “They know that these markets are going to be robust, they’re going to be there for them in the future. But I think they also recognize that there are moments like this when all of us have to step up, whether we’re governments or companies or individuals,” he said.

Even if the waiver is issued, some officials have said it could take months before manufacturers produce their first doses.

Dr. Murthy said more facilities need to be established where the vaccine can be made.

“We have a challenge right now globally with manufacturing capacity,” Dr. Murthy said. “We need to scale that up quickly, and this is a place where markets sometimes fail us because an individual company may not necessarily see the financial value of scaling up production for the entire world for this pandemic, after which you may be left with idle production capacity.”

Dr. Murthy said public-health officials in the U.S. aren’t sure whether vaccinated people might eventually need a booster.

“It partly depends on how long the immunity lasts from the vaccine,” he said, adding that the spread of variants “that are not as susceptible to the protection we have in the vaccine” could also require a booster.

Pfizer Inc. released findings of a study last month that showed its vaccine with BioNTech SE was highly effective six months after its second dose. The company said it hopes to provide more information on protection beyond six months and that it planned to continue to monitor study subjects for two years.

In the U.S., nearly 154 million people, or 58.7% of the adult population, have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. President Biden has set a goal to get 70% of the adult population at least one dose by July 4.

As more Americans get vaccinated, public-health officials have faced some criticism that they are being too cautious in their guidelines about when people can stop taking pandemic precautions. Dr. Murthy said he thought it was healthy to have that debate.

“I think one of the points that this debate highlights is that science isn’t black and white,” he said. “And these recommendations are often judgment calls that have to be made in the gray, and different people will disagree about where they fall.”

Write to Tarini Parti at [email protected]

Corrections & Amplifications
Dr. Vivek Murthy is the U.S. Surgeon General. An earlier version of this article misspelled his last name as Murphy in the headline. (Corrected on May 13)