The Associated Press
WASHINGTON The Biden administration on Wednesday joined calls for more sharing of the technology behind COVID-19 vaccines to help speed the end of the pandemic, a shift that puts the U.S. alongside many in the developing world who want rich countries to do more to get doses to the needy.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced the government’s position, amid World Trade Organization talks about a possible temporary waiver of its protections that would allow more manufacturers to produce the life-saving vaccines.
“The Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines,” Tai said in a statement.
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US seconds India s plan for patent waivers on Covid-19 vaccines
The Biden administration on Wednesday joined calls for more sharing of the technology behind COVID-19 vaccines to help speed the end of the pandemic, a shift that puts the U.S. alongside many in the developing world who want rich countries to do more to get doses to the needy.
United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced the governmentâs position, amid World Trade Organization talks about a possible temporary waiver of its protections that would allow more manufacturers to produce the life-saving vaccines.
âThe Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines,â Tai said in a statement.
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In a statement issued earlier today, United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced the Biden-Harris Administration s support for waiving intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines.
As we reported earlier this year, India and South Africa proposed last fall that the Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) recommend a waiver from the implementation, application and enforcement of Sections 1, 4, 5, and 7 of Part II of the TRIPS Agreement in relation to prevention, containment or treatment of COVID-19 to the General Council of the WTO. The two countries also recommended that [t]he waiver should continue until widespread vaccination is in place globally.
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The pharmaceutical industry, which thought it had entered the can-do-no-wrong stage of public esteem thanks to its development of COVID-19 vaccines in record time, just got taken down a peg by the Biden administration.
On Wednesday, the administration said it supports waiving patent protections for those same vaccines to help combat the pandemic around the world.
Drugmakers, which were counting on lavish profits from the vaccines, squealed like stuck pigs. Phrma, their leading trade group, called the policy “an unprecedented step that will undermine our global response to the pandemic and compromise safety.”
This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures.