Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director general of WTO (AP Photo/Keystone/Alessandro Della Bella)

Opin­ion: Waiv­ing Covid-19 vac­cine IP could save lives, but where is the man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty?

Droves of House De­moc­rats in Wash­ing­ton and mem­bers of the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment have now glommed on­to a ma­jor push by In­dia and South Africa at the WTO to abol­ish all IP around Covid-19 vac­cines.

At first blush, waiv­ing this IP sounds like an easy win: More Covid-19 vac­cines made lo­cal­ly for more peo­ple means more lives saved. Sim­ple enough, es­pe­cial­ly as low-in­come coun­tries have re­ceived just a tiny frac­tion of the world’s vac­cine al­lot­ment so far.

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