Opinion: WTO: Don’t make a bad situation worse by granting intellectual property waivers for Covid-19 therapeutics and diagnostics
The World Trade Organization recently agreed to suspend patent protections for Covid-19 vaccines. The trade body is now considering going one step further: extending the intellectual property waiver to Covid-19 therapeutics and diagnostics. That misguided idea would have disastrous consequences: further eroding intellectual property protections will discourage research and development and make it even harder to fight deadly diseases and future pandemics.
South Africa and India first proposed an intellectual property waiver nearly two years ago. They claimed that suspending patents would allow manufacturers in developing countries to produce generic versions of vaccines and therapeutics without paying royalties to the companies that developed them, which was necessary to curb the pandemic and vaccinate people around the world.
