TRIPS

Failure of the UK and EU countries to agree to TRIPS waiver costs lives and undermines the credibility and future of WTO. 17.5 million people have died from COVID-19 in the 20 months since WTO talks about relaxing COVID-19 intellectual property (IP) rules began - the equivalent of nearly 30,000 people a day, said campaigners from Oxfam and the People’s Vaccine Alliance today ahead of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial.

Responding to news that governments at the World Trade Organization (WTO) have agreed a deal on patents for COVID-19 vaccines in developing countries, Max Lawson, Co-Chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance and Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam, said: “This is absolutely not the broad intellectual property waiver the world desperately needs to ensure access to vaccines and treatments for everyone, everywhere.

New figures from the Peoples Vaccine Alliance reveal that the companies behind two of the most successful COVID vaccines – Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna – are making combined profits of $65,000 every minute. The figures based on the latest company reports are released as CEOs from pharmaceutical industry meet for the annual STAT summit —the equivalent of a ‘Big Pharma Davos’— from 16-18 November.

In reaction to today’s global COVID summit hosted by President Biden, campaigners from the People’s Vaccine Alliance caution that ambitious goals to vaccinate the world will only be met with bold action to increase manufacturing, technology transfer, and access to COVID-19 vaccines around the world, not empty promises.

On the eve of President Biden’s global COVID-19 summit on the side-lines of the UN General Assembly, campaigners from the People’s Vaccine Alliance are calling for world leaders to go beyond empty promises of charity and deliver bold action to increase manufacturing and access to COVID-19 vaccines around the world.

More than 140 former heads of state and government and Nobel laureates today called on the candidates to be the next German chancellor Annalena Baerbock, Olaf Scholz, and Armin Laschet to declare themselves in favour of waiving intellectual property rules for COVID-19 vaccines and transferring vaccine technologies, and “to make these the policies of any future coalition government”. 

Oxfam India welcomes the US decision to back the waiver of intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines.

 

One year on from the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, the People’s Vaccine Alliance is warning that developing countries are facing critical shortages of oxygen and medical supplies to cope with COVID-19 cases yet the majority have been unable to administer a single dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. In contrast rich nations have vaccinated their citizens at a rate of one person per second over the last month.

The poorest nations in the world succeeded in securing a deal to extend the transition period on the implementation of Trade Related Aspects on Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) by eight more ye

New Oxfam report: The proliferation of substandard medicines in poor countries is being used by rich countries as an excuse to tighten intellectual property rules, boosting the profits of large pharmaceutical companies while making it harder for poor people to get access to the medicines they need.