The Joe Biden administration in the United States on Wednesday announced support for waiving patent protections for Covid-19 vaccines . Th...
The Joe Biden administration in the United States on Wednesday announced support for waiving patent protections for Covid-19 vaccines.
The move came after the US came under intense pressure to waive protections for vaccine manufacturers, especially amid criticism that rich nations were hoarding Covid-19 vaccines. India and South Africa have been leading the fight within the World Trade Organization to allow more drugmakers to manufacture the vaccines.
“This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures,” US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a statement. “The [Biden] administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for Covid-19 vaccines.”
These extraordinary times and circumstances of call for extraordinary measures.
— Ambassador Katherine Tai (@AmbassadorTai) May 5, 2021
The US supports the waiver of IP protections on COVID-19 vaccines to help end the pandemic and we’ll actively participate in @WTO negotiations to make that happen. pic.twitter.com/96ERlboZS8
World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus appreciated the move. In a tweet, he referred to the move as a “monumental moment” and that it was “a powerful example of United States’ leadership to address global health challenges”.
This is a monumental moment in the fight against...
