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The United States has supported a temporary suspension of the intellectual property rights of Covid-19 vaccines to an extent that could infuriate the pharmaceutical industry, which strongly opposes the so-called waiver.
Joe Biden’s chief business adviser, Katherine Tai, said that while the U.S. administration “strongly believes” in IP protections, it would support a waiver of those rules for vaccines.
“This is a global health crisis and the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic require extraordinary measures,” Tai said in a statement.
The shares of major coronavirus vaccine companies were affected by Wednesday’s announcement. Shares of Moderna, BioNTech and Novavax fell between 5 and 7% in New York trading, while the price of Pfizer shares fell nearly 1% before recovering.
Companies did not immediately respond to the request for feedback.
At the World Trade Organization, India and South Africa proposed in October a measure to allow countries to temporarily revoke patent rights for pandemic-related medical products, and have since been supported. for about 60 countries.
The Donald Trump administration strongly opposed the waiver of the WTO, along with the United Kingdom, the EU and Switzerland, but Tai had baffled U.S. pharmaceutical companies by testing that position.
Tai said the US would “actively participate” in text-based negotiations at the WTO, but that such negotiations would take time given the consensual nature of the institution and the complexity of the issues involved.
“As our supply of vaccines to the American people is assured, the administration will continue to intensify its efforts (working with the private sector and all potential partners) to expand vaccine manufacturing and distribution,” he said. Tai.
“It will also work to increase the raw materials needed to produce these vaccines,” he added.
Tai and his staff have been discussing WTO intellectual property rules in recent weeks with top executives of pharmaceutical companies and vaccine manufacturers, unions, advocacy groups and Seth Berkley, chief executive of the alliance. of vaccines supported by the UN, Gavi.
In a speech at the WTO meeting on vaccine equity earlier this month, Tai said both the government and the private sector should do their part to “live up to” “the spirit” of trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights Agreement (travel), which was born of the HIV crisis.
Gregg Gonsalves, assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health, welcomed the announcement Wednesday as “a start.”
He added: “We need the writing of the text of this waiver to be transparent and public. But, as we’ve always said, we need technology transfer now and the U.S. will use the $ 16 billion already appropriated in the American Rescue Plan to lay the groundwork for international and domestic manufacturing expansion. There is no going back ”.
Earlier this week, Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, said he was “agnostic” on the question of whether there would be a resignation, but warned of the political implications of supporting the move.
He said: “Going back and forth, consuming time and lawyers in a legal argument about resignations, this is not the end. People are dying around the world and we need to take the vaccines in their arms as quickly and efficiently as possible. possible ”.
His comments provoked a backlash from Biden’s liberal supporters, especially when journalist Mehdi Hasan questioned him on his online TV show.
Saikat Chakrabati, chairman of the left-wing think tank New Consensus, responded to Fauci’s comments in a tweet: “Renouncing Covid patents is by no means mutually exclusive with the administration of vaccine doses to countries now.”
He added: “You don’t have the privilege of being ‘agnostic’ when you’re the president’s chief medical adviser. There’s no agnostic. Agnostic means doing the status quo, which in itself is a decision.”
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