The WTO was supposed to meet this week to consider a proposal that has been languishing for the past year: a temporary waiver of pharmaceutical intellectual property (IP) during the COVID-19 pandemic to allow poor countries to make many of the same tests, treatments and vaccines that rich countries have had throughout the pandemic. Yet, in a cruel reminder of the urgency of the problem, the WTO meeting was postponed, owing to the emergence of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV2, detected by scientists in South Africa, although precisely where it originated remains unclear. There is near-unanimo...
Source: taipeitimes.com
