In November 2020, only eight months after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared covid-19 a pandemic, the scientific community achieved the unimaginable: It delivered an effective vaccine against the new virus.
Around the same time, several low- and middle-income countries, led by India and South Africa, began petitioning (pdf) the World Trade Organization (WTO), asking for a waiver of patents and intellectual property rights for all drugs, vaccines, diagnostics, and other technologies related to covid-19 for the duration of the pandemic.
Western countries had already secured the rights to large volumes of vaccines that were yet to be made, and despite efforts such as Covax, countries in the so-called global south wanted to increase their covid-19 manufacturing capacity, and to produce diagnostics and therapeutics as needed, without having to pay pricey licensing fees to pharmaceutical companies. The research and development of covid-19 treatments had been heavily subsidized by governments, and pharma companies were guaranteed to profit from vaccines.
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Originally published on Quartz : Original article