Yet the EU has consistently opposed India and South Africa's proposal at the World Trade Organization to temporarily waive certain intellectual property rules under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, a measure that would expand access to lifesaving vaccines and other health products. The arguments used by the.
Jayati Ghosh
The decision by Joe Biden’s administration to stop opposing a proposed Covid-19 waiver of certain intellectual-property rights under World Trade Organization rules is a welcome move. The United States trade representative, Katherine Tai, acknowledges that ‘the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures’. While affirming that it ‘believes strongly in intellectual property protections’, the Biden administration ‘in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for Covid-19 vaccines’. Already, the US decision may be persuading other rich-country hold-outs in Europe and elsewhere to follow suit.
While the rapid development of Covid-19 vaccines was a truly impressive achievement, it has been tarnished by constraints on global vaccine supply and the related inequities in distribution. As of May 4th, less than 8 per cent of the world’s population had received even one dose of any Covid-19 va
There has been impressive progress on the vaccination front. Scientists have come up with multiple vaccines in record time. Unprecedented public and private financing has supported vaccine research, development and manufacturing scale-up.