Who owns the virus? Pandemic sparks debate on data sharing

An employee of Viet A corp works with Covid-19 testing kits inside a lab of their factory in Binh Duong province, during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease in Vietnam in this handout picture taken on March 2, 2020. [Reuters]

The coronavirus pandemic has rekindled a long-standing debate on whether viruses are a nation's property, and if countries are obliged to share biological samples and scientific data that are key to developing life-saving treatments and vaccines.

More than 6.5 million people are reported to have been infected globally, according to a Reuters tally.

China, where the novel coronavirus emerged late last year, shared the viral genetic sequence data (GSD) with the World Health Organization (WHO) in early January.

That enabled laboratories around the world to start developing test kits, medications and vaccines.

Since then, however, a war of words has erupted around who gets access to vaccines and treatments first, with outrage over reports the U.S. administration tried to gain access to a potential vaccine being developed by a German firm.

"It is morally wrong to think that someone has a stronger claim to a vaccine because they happen to live in a rich country," said Mark Eccleston-Turner, co-author of a recent paper on the issue of viral sovereignty.

The international legal system encourages countries to look at viruses as their "sovereign resources that can be bargained and bartered away in exchange for future health goods such as vaccines," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"We need to move away from this model to one where viruses, and the health goods which are developed are seen as public goods, which everyone in the world has equal claim and access to," said Eccleston-Turner, a lecturer at Britain's Keele University.

'BLIND SPOT'

Countries have fought before over sharing virus samples and data, and access to vaccines, notably during the AIDS crisis and the Ebola outbreak.

In 2007 Indonesia stopped sharing virus samples of the H5N1 avian flu virus, on concerns that wealthy countries were developing vaccines based on those strains, which they would then sell at high prices.

Indonesia resumed sharing of virus samples after the WHO vowed to help boost vaccine production in poorer countries, but the face-off reiterated the persistent challenge of sharing scientific data and biological samples.

The U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (1992) and its Nagoya Protocol (2012) on access and benefit sharing both recognise nations' sovereignty over genetic resources, with no legal obligation to share, even in a health emergency.

"The lack of a clear legal obligation to share represents a blind spot in international law and governance, impeding pandemic response and scientific progress," Eccleston-Turner wrote in the Science journal paper published in May.

But "limiting access to the resources on the basis of state sovereignty may be one of the few points of leverage available to developing countries hoping to negotiate fair and equitable access to diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines," he said.

The question of who owns data - and not just scientific data - has come under scrutiny during the coronavirus crisis, as countries rolled out technologies to track the virus, but which digital rights experts say invade privacy and increase surveillance.

But the very idea of data sovereignty "is illusory," said Martin Tisne, managing director of philanthropic organisation Luminate, that works on digital rights issues.

"COVID-19 is a public harm; we will fight it by building a public good. The data, models and software used to address the COVID-19 pandemic should be as open as possible," he said.