556 Essential: The IPR waiver can easily expedite the mass production of generics, making them cheaply available. Reuters
Devinder Sharma
Food & Agriculture Specialist
This is disturbing. With only one-in-500 among the low-income countries having received the vaccine shot against one-in-four among the high-income countries, gross vaccine inequality has been at play. As per the World Health Organisation (WHO), poor countries have received only 0.2 per cent of the vaccine doses while the rich countries have walked away with a share of 87 per cent.
So far, only 32 per cent in America, 27 per cent in the UK, 2 per cent in India and 0.3 per cent of the population in the Philippines have received both doses. At this rate, it may take years before the world can emerge out of the pandemic. The rich need to understand they cannot remain safely isolated from the deadly virus till the poor too have got the protective shield.
United States Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai. File
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AFP
The news will support the increased production of vaccines globally as countries, including India, continue to reel under the impact of the pandemic.
The United States will support an initiative at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to waive Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) protection for COVID-19 vaccines, the Biden administration said on Wednesday. The news will support the increased production of vaccines globally as countries, including India, continue to reel under the impact of the pandemic. The initiative was first floated by India and South Africa last October.
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Workers clearning railway coaches converted into Covid-19 isolation wards at the Sabarmati Station in Ahmedabad on Wednesday May 5, 2021.
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VIJAY SONEJI
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The current COVID-19 surge in India may begin to start tapering between the middle and end of May, virologist Gagandeep Kang said on Wednesday. At a virtual interaction with members of the Indian Women Press Corps, Dr. Kang said, “Best guess estimates from a number of models put this somewhere between the middle and end of the month. Some models have it [second wave] going out in early June. Based on what we are seeing now, middle to end of May would be a reasonable estimate.”
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai. File photo
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12 Republican lawmakers write a seven-page letter to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on the issue U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he had not made a decision on whether the U.S. would support an Indian and South African initiative at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to waive Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to facilitate the production of COVID-19 related vaccines and therapeutics around the world.
“Well, we’re going to decide that as we go along, I haven’t made that decision yet,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday afternoon at the White House, after he delivered remarks on the U.S.’s vaccination campaign. His administration would move as quickly as possible to get as many doses of Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines to export to the rest of the world, Mr Biden said. The U.S. government has already ordered 100 million additional doses of these vaccines through