Calls For COVID Patent Waivers Persist As Pooling Initiatives Plough Ahead

In October 2020, the Indian and South African governments called upon the World Trade Organization to suspend certain obligations of the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, to allow open access to the patents on COVID-19 products related to prevention, treatment and containment of the disease for the duration of the pandemic. This, they argued, would help to facilitate access to vaccines and therapeutics for the global population – not just for wealthy countries which could afford to import the products, or those with the ability to manufacture them locally. The rapid upscale of local production, they said, would be critical to ensure wider access to affordable and effective medicines.

Heading into 2022, the waiver proposal has yet to come to fruition, even after the submission of a revised draft in May 2021 that narrowed it down to cover “health products and technologies” relating to COVID-19 prevention,