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Negotiators are meeting in Geneva this week to thrash out a pandemic treaty aimed at ensuring the flaws that turned COVID-19 into a global crisis could never happen again. 

As the third anniversary of the emergence of the virus rolls around, negotiators are raking over an early concept draft of what might eventually make it into an international agreement about how to handle future pandemics. 

“The lessons of the pandemic must not go unlearned,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the negotiating panel at the start of three days of talks, which conclude Wednesday. 

An intergovernmental negotiating body is paving the way toward a global agreement that would regulate how nations prepare for and respond to future pandemic threats. 

They are gathered for their third meeting, refining and going over their ideas so far. 

A progress report will be put before WHO member states next year, with the final outcome to be presented for their consideration in May of 2024. 

The dense, 32-page early draft “is a true reflection of the aspirations for a different paradigm for strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery,” said Tedros. 

The so-called conceptual zero draft contains various notions, some of which will have to be developed and others thrown out as negotiators pare down the text ahead of the next meeting in February. 

The trick will ultimately be finding the balance between something bold and with teeth, and something all countries can agree to. 

‘Don’t blow this opportunity’

“There’s a lot of material currently that probably doesn’t belong in there,” said Pamela Hamamoto, the lead U.S. negotiator. 

“There’s a lot that needs to change before we’re going to sign onto it. That is the same for a lot of member states — probably most,” she told reporters. 

Hamamoto said Washington wanted to see transparency fixed into the accord, along with better surveillance and rapid response, plus swift and comprehensive data sharing. 

The United States also wants to see more equitable access to medical countermeasures, possibly through regional manufacturing. 

“A pretty broadly-held view is that we need to make sure that the process is set up right so … we basically don’t blow this opportunity to put together an accord that is going to be meaningful and implementable,” Hamamoto said. 

The Panel for a Global Public Health Convention, an independent coalition of statespeople and health leaders, said the conceptual draft did not go far enough, despite its bright spots. 

The panel said more should be done to establish accountability and clear timelines for alert and response to avoid damaging consequences when an outbreak emerges. 

Negotiations at ‘crossroads’

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders said the negotiations must not overlook the role of clinical trials in any pandemic response. 

Mohga Kamal-Yanni, of the NGO coalition People’s Vaccine Alliance, said the draft showed negotiations were “at a crossroads.” 

“A treaty could break with the greed and inequality that has plagued the global response to COVID-19, HIV/AIDS and other pandemics. Or it could tie future generations to the same disastrous outcomes,” she said. 

“Governments must resist any attempts to turn a pandemic treaty into another obscene profit opportunity for pharmaceutical companies.” 

Three years in, the pandemic still has power to disrupt lives and societies — as seen in the recent unrest in China over lockdowns. 

Countries have reported 6.6 million deaths to the WHO, while around 640 million confirmed cases have been registered.  

But the U.N. health agency says this will be a massive undercount. 

Global Fund executive director Peter Sands told reporters last month that “having a nice treaty … will have only a partial impact on how effectively we respond.” 

He said the world was undoubtedly already better prepared for the next pandemic but warned: “That doesn’t mean we are well prepared. It just means we’re not as badly prepared as we were before.” 

 
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Price increases among seven out of 10 drugs in 2021 are behind an $805 million increase in U.S. spending from the year before and were not supported by clinical evidence, an influential U.S. pricing research firm said on Tuesday. 

The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) said the spending increase in 2021 was less than the $1.67 billion rise in the previous year. This is the third year the group has looked at the top 250 drugs by spending and assessed if those driving U.S. spending increases were justified.

“Last year, a huge part of the (increase in) spending was all one drug … this year, we saw the increase was more spread out across different drugs,” ICER’s Chief Medical Officer David Rind told Reuters. 

In 2020, Abbvie’s rheumatoid arthritis therapy Humira led to an almost $1.4 billion increase in U.S. drug spending, accounting for more than 80% of the total increase. 

Rind said Humira dropped off the list of the 10 costliest prescription drugs because its net price hike was lower in 2021. Since there was no single drug that drove the increase in spending this year, the rise is also relatively smaller compared with 2020, he added. 

Bausch Health’s Xifaxan, an antibiotic drug for traveler’s diarrhea, led to an increase of nearly $175 million in spending, among the highest this year. 

Johnson & Johnson’s schizophrenia therapy Invega Sustenna and Amgen’s osteoporosis drug Prolia followed closely with spending increases of $170 million and $124 million, respectively. 

The three drugmakers did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment. 

President Joe Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act will allow the government to choose 10 drugs to negotiate the prices of from among the 50 costliest drugs for Medicare, the government health care program for people age 65 and older or disabled, starting in 2026. 
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Aid groups say measles and cholera outbreaks at Kenya’s congested Dadaab refugee camp have killed at least five people and sickened more than 400.  The outbreaks come as thousands of Somalis have been arriving at the camp this year to escape record drought back home, stretching camp resources.  Juma Majanga reports from Dadaab refugee camp in northeast Kenya.
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NASA’s Orion spaceship made a close pass by the moon and used a gravity assist to whip itself back toward Earth on Monday, marking the start of the return journey for the Artemis-1 mission.

At its nearest point, the uncrewed capsule flew less than 130 kilometers from the moon’s surface, testing maneuvers that will be used during later Artemis missions that return humans to the rocky celestial body.

Communication with the capsule was interrupted for 30 minutes when it was behind the far side of the moon, an area more cratered than the near side and first seen by humans during the Apollo era, although they didn’t land there.

The European Service Module, which powers the capsule, fired its main engine for more than three minutes to put the gumdrop-shaped Orion on course for home.

“We couldn’t be more pleased about how the spacecraft is performing,” Debbie Korth, Orion Program deputy manager, said later.

As spectacular footage flashed on their screens once communication was restored, she told a news conference, “everybody in the room, we just kind of had to stop and pause, and just really look — ‘Wow, we’re saying goodbye to the moon.'”

Monday’s maneuver was the last major one of the mission, which began when NASA’s mega moon rocket SLS blasted off from Florida on November 16. From start to finish, the journey should last 25½ days.

Orion will now make only slight course corrections until it splashes down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego on Sunday at 9:40 a.m. local time (1740 GMT). It will then be recovered and hoisted aboard a U.S. Navy ship.

Earlier in the mission, Orion spent about six days in “distant retrograde orbit” around the moon, meaning at high altitude and traveling opposite the direction the moon revolves around Earth.

A week ago, Orion broke the distance record for a habitable capsule, venturing 450,000 kilometers from Earth.

Once it returns to Earth, Orion will have traveled more than 1.4 million miles, said Mike Sarafin, the Artemis mission manager.

Re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere will present a harsh test for the spacecraft’s heat shield, which will need to withstand temperatures of around 2,800 degrees Celsius – or about half the temperature of the surface of the sun.

Under the Artemis program — named for the sister of Apollo in Greek mythology — the United States is seeking to build a lasting presence on the moon in preparation for an onward voyage to Mars.

Artemis 2 will involve a crewed journey to the moon, once again without landing.

The first woman and next man are to land on the lunar south pole during Artemis 3, which is set for no sooner than 2025, though likely significantly later given timeline delays.
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