The US and Germany are at odds on the issue of waivers for patents on Covid-19 vaccines, as Berlin argued that a waiver would not increase production and would inhibit future private sector research. The disagreement is the first major rift between the two economic powers since Joe Biden took office, and threatens to deadlock discussions at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and sour relations within the G7 group of major industrialised democracies. Any WTO decision on a waiver would have to be by consensus, so Germany opposition is a major obstacle to intellectual property rights on vaccines being suspended. The Biden government’s announcement on Wednesday that it would back a waiver on vaccine patents was welcomed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a step towards greater global equity at a time when poor countries have little access to vaccines and south Asia has been hit by a devastating outbreak. India accounted for 46% of the new Covid-19 cases recorded around the world over the past week, and there are signs the wave is spreading to Nepal, Sri Lanka and other neighbouring states. But Angela Merkel’s government came out against a waiver on Thursday.“The US suggestion for the lifting of patent protection for Covid-19 vaccines has significant implications for vaccine production as a whole,” a government spokeswoman said.“The limiting factors in the production of vaccines are the production capacities and the high-quality standards and not patents,” she added, arguing that the companies were already working with partners to boost manufacturing capacity.“The protection of intellectual property is a source of innovation and must remain so in the future.”The US secretary of state, Tony Blinken, said the patent waiver was just one of a variety of means the administration was looking at to intensify the struggle to contain the pandemic.“The main thing is we have to speed this up,” Blinken told MSNBC during a visit to Ukraine. “On the current trajectory, if we don’t do more, if the entire world doesn’t do more, the world won’t be vaccinated until 2024. We can speed this up and get that done, I think, in a much shorter time. And if we do, we’re all going to be better off.”Pharmaceutical companies reacted with anger to the US decision, and shares in Chinese and American vaccine manufacturers tumbled. Some countries also expressed private astonishment, with one diplomat accusing the US of grandstanding by offering crowd-pleasing simplistic solutions to long-term problems. In normal times, patents preserve the profits of the multinational companies that make drugs and vaccines, making it illegal for rivals to turn out cheap copycat versions for up to 20 years. But amid a pandemic in which the WHO says no one is safe until everyone is safe, campaigners say there is a powerful moral case for ditching them. The Biden announcement on waivers has divided the European Union. Emmanuel Macron said he was “absolutely in favour” of the move, in marked a


All data is taken from the source: https://www.theguardian.com/
Article Link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/06/us-germany-rift-covid-vaccine-patent-waivers


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