US supports India and SA proposal for IP waiver of Covid vaccines

US government has supported India and South Africa's joint proposal at WTO over lifting the patent protection of Covid-19 drugs which can help the poor parts of the world get more doses. This move assumes that the inoculation drive will speed up especially in the poor countries amid pandemic.

The decision also got the support of France's Emmanuel Macron and has been getting praises from countries and health advocates. Nevertheless, the decision also saw the pharmaceutical industry not supporting it with countries such as Germany stating that this won't help to curb the outbreak anytime soon and will hurt innovation.

This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures," the United States Trade Representative (USTR) said Thursday. USTR in its statement said that it strongly believes in the IP protection but for the service of ending this pandemic, USTR said it supports the waiver of those protections for Covid-19 vaccines and that it will "actively participate in text-based negotiations. "Those negotiations to affect the IP waiver would take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issues involved", said USTR in the statement.

This proposal was floated jointly by India and South Africa last year seeking waiver of the IP rights for prevention, containment, or treatment of Covid-19 which was supported by more than 100 countries with EU, Japan, US, Australia continue opposing it. Such a proposal sought the removal of trade barriers for better accessibility of vaccines and medical products.

Such a decision will be taken by the members of WTO having the complex trade rules among nations. The decision needs to be taken unanimously, and if successful, the developers will need to share the know-how of the vaccine for manufacturing. Such type of unanimous decision has never been taken before except the temporary waiver that was passed at WTO for importing cheap generic drugs for HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria.

"A waiver is the simple but the wrong answer to what is a complex problem," said the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations. "Waiving patents of COVID-19 vaccines will not increase production nor provide practical solutions needed to battle this global health crisis."