WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus visitng Afrigen's facility in Cape Town, where researchers are working on replicating Moderna's shot (Shelley Christians/Reuters via Alamy)
Moderna’s new patent policy is a mixed blessing for WHO effort to replicate company's vaccine
Moderna’s announcement yesterday of a new patent enforcement policy was global, but it had its most immediate impact on one small corner of the globe.
For the last year, a WHO-contracted company in Cape Town, South Africa has worked to reverse-engineer and replicate Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine. It was one step in an effort to make the shot, which has largely gone to rich countries, broadly available, and to help low- and middle-income nations access mRNA technology that can be deployed against other pathogens and future outbreaks.
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