The public has a right to transparency

The federal government is well advised to inform the public as quickly as possible about the contracts with the vaccine manufacturers. At the same time, Switzerland cannot afford to breach a contract.

There are still many secrets surrounding the procurement and development of vaccines like those of the two suppliers Biontech and Pfizer.

Christoph Ruckstuhl / NZZ

The pharmaceutical industry has developed vaccines against Sars-CoV-2 in record time, but to this day it hardly gets any credit for it from the public. On the contrary, the manufacturers are accused of taking shortcuts in development and, above all, of enriching themselves at the expense of humanity.

topic affects everyone

The topic is also a topic of discussion in Switzerland – no wonder, given that large parts of the population have more or less voluntarily accepted the vaccination. The desire for the greatest possible transparency is understandable. Who doesn’t want to know whether everything went 100% correctly during the accelerated approval process, on which data basis the decisions for the approval of the administration were made and what prices the manufacturers were able to enforce for the individual doses.

As far as the contracts with the producers are concerned, there have long been attempts in Switzerland to obtain disclosure from the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG) on the basis of the Disclosure Act. So far they have been unsuccessful.

Now the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner Adrian Lobsiger seems to have made a U-turn. As the newspapers from CH-Media report, Lobsiger came to the conclusion that the BAG must make the contracts transparent on request.

How confidential are agreements?

That could still get things moving. However, it is not yet clear whether Switzerland would be in breach of contract if it were to announce all the details of the agreements with the vaccine suppliers.

It may well be that the BAG has agreed to similar confidentiality clauses as the authorities of other countries. From Albania, for example, it is known that a non-disclosure obligation was agreed with the manufacturer duo Biontech-Pfizer for ten years after the end of the contract.

A breach of contract would be detrimental to Switzerland’s international reputation and, as the industry association Interpharma argues, could actually make negotiations about future procurement of vaccines and medicines more difficult. This fear prompted the Council of States last December to overturn a decision by the National Council, the majority of which had advocated disclosure of current contracts with vaccine manufacturers.

No exception for pharmaceutical industry

At the same time, it seems clear that the greatest possible transparency must be created quickly when it comes to the vaccine against Sars-CoV-2. Taxpayers worldwide have a right to know what has been purchased, in what quantities and at what price. Finally, there is also an obligation to provide information for other public procurements, whether this relates to office furniture for government offices, EDP products or armaments.

The pharmaceutical industry has also noticed that transparency is being demanded in more and more areas of life. In times of digitization, transparency is a megatrend that no sector can escape. The bosses of the vaccine manufacturers communicated early on how much the individual doses cost. In their case, the price is about the same as that of a meal, according to Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, for example.

Seen in this way, at least with a view to the prices, one should not expect any great gain in knowledge from the publication of the BAG contracts. It could be much more exciting in the USA. A judge there ruled 14 days ago that the national health authority (FDA) must make the data from the approval process for the Pfizer vaccine available in an expedited manner. Instead of piecemeal over 75 (!) years, the extensive material will now be on the table in full by around September 2022, so that scientists and medical practitioners worldwide can bend over it.

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