The World Trade Organization chief on Thursday hailed US Trade Representative Katherine Tai's announcement that Washington supports a temporary global waiver on patent protections for Covid-19 vaccines as the pandemic rages. "I warmly welcome her willingness to engage with proponents of a temporary waiver of the TRIPS agreement to help in combating the Covid-19 pandemic," Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in a statement, read to reporters by her spokesman Keith Rockwell. Tai issued a statement Wednesday signalling the shift in Washington's position towards an intellectual property waiver on the vaccines needed to battle the pandemic. "This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures," she said. "We need to respond urgently to Covid-19 because the world is watching, and people are dying," she said in her statement.

Source: Mint May 06, 2021 16:30 UTC