How Joe Biden could vaccinate the world
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President Biden surprised the world when his administration came out in favor of an intellectual property waiver for coronavirus vaccines. The U.S. is now backing an effort from India and South Africa to get a Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) waiver at the World Trade Organization (WTO), with the intent of expanding global vaccine production.
But it isn t going to be that easy. Germany s Angela Merkel has already come out against a waiver (one of the key vaccine firms, BioNTech, is based there), which could doom the effort because the WTO requires consensus. Luckily, there are other steps that Biden could take to accelerate vaccine production and distribution, which as we see in the ongoing viral conflagration happening in India, is absolutely vital. If the international community can t get behind vaccinating the world, Biden should go it alone.
By Renee Bonorchis
(Bloomberg) – Vaccines need to be viewed as a global public good and the intellectual property, knowledge, technology and data related to Covid-19 vaccines should be available to all, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in his weekly letter.
South Africa and India have recently submitted proposals on the World Trade Organisation’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights that would allow for a temporary waiver of certain aspects of TRIPS. This would mean wider access to the technologies needed to produce vaccines and medicines.
“A situation in which the populations of advanced, rich countries are safely inoculated while millions in poorer countries die in the queue would be tantamount to vaccine apartheid,” Ramaphosa said. “It will set a devastating precedent in our quest to realise a more egalitarian world and our ability to handle future pandemics.”
WATCH Covid-19 weekly round-up: Travellers will be monitored for virus variants
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In an effort to contain the spread of the virus variants from India and the UK, the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa (NGS-SA) has intensified the monitoring of confirmed Covid-19 cases from travellers arriving in South Africa.
This is according to Professor Tulio de Oliveira, director of the KZN Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform.
De Oliveira said there had been a number of other samples from cases with recent travel into South Africa that are currently being sequenced and results are expected within the next few days.
South Africa is once again leading calls for waiver of intellectual rights for Covid-19 vaccines.
South Africa has, alongside India, submitted a proposal to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for a temporary waiver of certain aspects of intellectual property rights to ensure wider access of technologies to produce vaccines and medicines.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said that the idea was to scale up local production of medicines and vaccines so that they were accessible to all. This step aims to empower all countries, rich and poor, to fight the Covid-19 pandemic and avert what he said would be tantamount to “vaccine apartheid.”