European Union announces that it is “ready” to talk about the release of patents for vaccines against the coronavirus

BRUSSELS.- After the gesture of President of the United States, Joe Biden, who yesterday was in favor of publish patents on coronavirus vaccines to advance in the fight against pandemic on a global scale, today European Union They were also willing to start talking about the issue, more than a year after the start of the epidemic and while there were already 155,888,121 infected globally, 18,519,268 active patients, 134,111,238 those who defeated Covid-19 and 3,257,615 dead.

“The EU is ready to discuss any proposal that responds to the crisis in an efficient and pragmatic way. We are therefore ready to talk about how the removal of intellectual property can help achieve this goal ”, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said this morning.

In a videoconference speech, however, the official reinforced that anyway the priority must be to increase the global supply capacity. In fact, this is the position the bloc is most fond of, which until now, even before Biden’s proposal, has vigorously opposed a move like this.

In front of an academic audience, Von der Leyen criticized countries that put obstacles in the global distribution of vaccines, their veto on exports and admitted that the Vaccination campaigns in the EU started with problems. “But I will say that Europe has managed to stay open to the world, while others have reserved their vaccine production for themselves,” he said.

“Europe is the main exporter of vaccines in the world. So far, more than 200 million doses produced on the continent have been exported to the rest of the world “, he assured and added:” Europe exports as many vaccines as it distributes to its own population. And to be clear, Europe is the only democratic region that exports vaccines on a large scale ”. So, without naming them, he referred to Russia and China, two other major exporters.

After learning of the United States government’s decision to support proposals to exempt Covid-19 vaccines from intellectual property protection, the President of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the announcement “historic” and thus showed his enthusiasm about it.

It was the trade representative of the United States, Katherine Tai, who communicated the country’s position in the midst of the negotiations The world trade organization relax international trade rules and allow more countries to produce vaccines.

“The government strongly believes in protecting intellectual property, but to help end this pandemic, it supports exemption from these protections for Covid-19 vaccines, ” Tai said in a statement.

However, warned that it would take time to reach the necessary “consensus” to waive these protections in accordance with the rules of the organization. “This is a global health crisis and the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic require extraordinary measures,” Tai said and concluded: “The government’s goal is to provide as many safe and effective vaccines as possible. large number of people in the world. little time possible ”.

The statements made today by Von der Leyen on approving the debate are a further step in this direction. There are currently 47 factories in the EU working to advance vaccine production. The bloc has signed contracts with Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, CureVac and Sanofi / GSK.

AFP and AP agencies

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