The world needs something that is accessible.

"As of 23 March 2020, it seems that Japan and China have issued an export ban on the substance. Japan and China are the only countries in which favirapir is produced and approved as a medical compound." [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favipiravir

And I guess setting up factories to produce millions of doses of new meds can take a while. At the same time, each new manufacturer has to negotiate terms with the patent holder. Using an existing cheap generic drug means that production facilities are already up and running and that any company could start if they have the means to produce it.

Apparently a 1-month dose costs £5 in the UK, so there doesn't seem to be a large hurdle to produce it.

Do governments have a good reason not to suspend patents for the time of emergency? Emergency rules break a lot of other businesses, and pharma is probably one of the few industries not in danger?

When thinking about this I always assume it is the same reason countries tended not to reach for national security provisions¹ despite how attractive they are, it just isn't clear how to put the genie back in the bottle when you've broken it with the biggest-and-most-crushy hammer you can find.

If you dig around in the other exceptions in the document I've linked you'll see there are multiple places where patent protection and protection of human life are discussed.

I know where I sit on the patent validity continuum already, but I also know other people are furiously bouncing on the other end of that seesaw.

1. https://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/gatt47_02_e.htm#a...

Some governments do this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/19/business/patents-health-e...

Curious about this as well, it would make sense to me for them to do this.

There has also been success with Avastin (bevacizumab), although the WHO does not seem to be pursuing it.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04275414

Since it ends in mab I assume it's a monoclonal antibody. Those are expensive as fuck because they're so difficult to make. I wonder whether we could scale production up to meet pandemic demand.

mabs are not a straight small molecule synth. Scale as much as you want, growing them takes a while even in parallel.

(this is more or less also why vaccine timelines are so long; chicken eggs take a bit of time to get going, and that's the best breeding ground we have!)