US supports India, SA’s plea at WTO for Covid vaccines’ patent waiver

Move comes after US backs patent waivers for Covid-19 vaccines

Brussels, May 6: European Union leaders said on Thursday that in the wake of the US backing patent waivers for Covid19 vaccine technology, the 27-nation bloc immediately will start discussing whether they should join such a move.

The leaders’ first opportunity to mould a common view will come as soon as a two-day summit in Porto, Portugal, that starts Friday. While many insist that waiving patents would only go part way toward making vaccines available and likely in the midterm only, French President Emmanuel Macron said he “completely” supports opening up intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines as “a global public good”.

At the same time, Macron insisted that the immediate priority for wealthier countries should be first donating more vaccine doses to poorer countries.

EU nations have long insisted they were in the vanguard of helping the rest of the world obtain vaccines, and have looked with a weary eye at how the United States effectively banned such exports itself.

The move to support waiving intellectual property protections on vaccines under World Trade Organisation rules marked a dramatic shift for the United States, which had previously lined up with many other developed nations opposed to the idea floated by India and South Africa. While the EU did not echo the US position, it generally welcomed President Joe Biden’s move.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that “we are ready to discuss how the US proposal for waiver on intellectual property protection for Covid vaccines could help” end the crisis. Von der Leyen said in a video address Thursday, though, that other issues should take center stage. “In the short run...we call upon all vaccine-producing countries to allow exports and to avoid measures that disrupt supply chains,”she said. —

— AFP Patients arrive to receive a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine at a vaccination centre in a shopping mall of Belgrade on Thursday. Serbia’s president said that his country would pay each citizen who gets a Covid jab before the end of May, in what could be the world’s first cash-for-jabs scheme.