Should Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers’ IP rights be waived?
- ‘We cannot rest until everyone has access, and we need to ensure sustainable vaccine supply chains for the long term,’ WHO chief says
- ‘The fact is that each additional day the vaccine shortage continues, people will pay with their lives,’ WTO boss says
The issue at stake is how to vaccinate billions of people around the world as quickly as possible. Many countries across the developing world could fall far short of the doses needed to achieve immunity and stop the virus spreading by the end of the year, experts say.
Meanwhile, wealthy countries have already rolled out or booked vaccines for significant portions of their populations, pushing the issue of fair vaccine access to the fore.
The Group of Seven countries last month pledged billions of dollars to improve access, and the US on Wednesday joined other rich countries that have promised to share excess doses once their own people have been vaccinated.
“We cannot rest until everyone has access, and we need to ensure sustainable vaccine supply chains for the long term that are vastly bigger than what we have now,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an opinion article published by The Guardian on March 5.