President Joe Biden’s administration declared support for a global waiver on patent rights for Covid-19 vaccines on Wednesday, providing hope to developing countries that have struggled to obtain the life-saving doses.
India, where the death toll has risen to a new daily high amid concerns that the worst is yet to come, has been at the forefront of the battle within the World Trade Organization (WTO) to encourage more drugmakers to produce vaccines, a step that pharma giants oppose.
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said that while intellectual property rights for businesses are important, Washington “supports the waiver of those protections for Covid-19 vaccines” to end the pandemic.
“This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures,” she said in a statement.
Biden had been under a lot of pressure to waive vaccine maker protections, particularly in light of accusations that wealthy countries were hoarding vaccines.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO), called the US decision “historic” and said it marked “a monumental moment in the fight against COVID19.”
After securing supplies for Americans, Biden’s administration would seek to “expand vaccine production and distribution,” as well as “increase the raw materials needed to manufacture those vaccines.”
For months, the WTO has been bombarded with requests to temporarily revoke intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines, a process known as a TRIPS waiver. TRIPS stands for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property.
Pharmaceutical companies and their host countries, on the other hand, have vehemently opposed the idea, claiming that patents aren’t the biggest impediment to scaling up production and warning that the change could stifle innovation.
“A waiver is the simple but the wrong answer to what is a complex problem,” the Geneva-based International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations lobby group said, describing the US move as “disappointing.”
