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TRADE GLOBAL MEETING ON VACCINE IP RIGHTS SET TO ASK FOR MORE TIME: The World Trade Organization (WTO) Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) meets today to discuss whether special rules are needed for Covid vaccine intellectual property the so-called “IP waiver.” There’s no consensus, or even a fragment of consensus: the TRIPS Council members are expected to ask the WTO’s General Council for more time to discuss the waiver, a Geneva-based trade official told POLITICO’s trade team.
Biden administration considers patent waivers for coronavirus vaccines
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Abolish Intellectual Property © Photo: Marco Bertorello/AFP (Getty Images) Give this to everyone.
Virologist and medical researcher Jonas Salk developed a successful polio vaccine that was approved in 1955, helping the world all but eradicate the disease.
When the late journalist Edward Murrow asked Salk who owned that vaccine’s patent, he famously responded, “Could you patent the sun?” It was in large part his commitment to keeping the jab’s recipe open-source that vaccines were produced globally and millions around the world were able to get it.
As the covid-19 health crisis unfolds, multinational pharmaceutical corporations like Moderna and Pfizer have taken a different approach. Their tight hold on the technology for their covid-19 vaccines has made them billions of dollars. While these strict intellectual property laws protections have allowed the rich to get even richer, they’ve put a damper on efforts to manufacture vaccines at scale. And with supply limited,
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Health care worker Maggie Sedidi receives a Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center in Soweto, South Africa, March 5, 2021. Credit:
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This week, South Africa resumed its rollout of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine to health workers across the country.
The country had suspended the vaccine earlier this month over concerns of rare blood clots in the US.
South Africa, unlike the US, could not afford to indefinitely suspend its only current vaccine available, especially in light of an overall global shortage of shots, and a third wave of the coronavirus on the horizon.
Fortunately, South Africa s resumption of COVID-19 vaccinations has coincided with an extra 1.1 million vaccine doses that were produced locally by South African company Aspen Pharmacare.
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