Po­ten­tial deal reached to fi­nal­ize TRIPS waiv­er over Covid-19 vac­cine IP rights

Amidst mul­ti­ple at­tempts at get­ting a Covid-19 vac­cine IP waiv­er through the World Trade Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WTO), there have been re­peat­ed fail­ures and de­lays in get­ting a draft res­o­lu­tion done amidst drawn-out ne­go­ti­a­tions in­volv­ing con­flict­ing gov­ern­ments, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies and NGOs. But with to­day’s an­nounce­ment, there’s some tan­gi­ble progress.

Fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions be­tween the four re­gions known as the Quad (EU, In­dia, South Africa and the US), a new doc­u­ment has emerged with the aim to iden­ti­fy prac­ti­cal ways of clar­i­fy­ing, stream­lin­ing and sim­pli­fy­ing how cer­tain de­vel­op­ing coun­tries can over­ride cer­tain vac­cine patents, un­der cer­tain con­di­tions, to di­ver­si­fy their abil­i­ty to pro­duce Covid-19 vac­cines.

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