What does patenting vaccines involve?

The temporary lifting of the patents that exist on vaccines would allow any laboratory, equipped with the appropriate technology, to freely produce the various drugs against the coronavirus without having to compensate those who developed the drugs.

Patents are normally valid for 20 years, although it is not necessary for a pharmaceutical company or any industry to wait that long to be able to negotiate bilateral agreements with other companies so that they can manufacture generic versions. what has been done for example with drugs against HIV-AIDS.

The idea currently being debated at the WTO is to temporarily suspend patents, probably until the end of the pandemic can be declared. Patent rights are covered by the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), signed in 1994 and included in the General Agreement that founded the WTO in 1995.

Which countries support this proposal?

Since the presentation of the proposal made by India and South Africa, the initiative has had the support of the bloc of developing countries, which currently have less possibilities of access to vaccines against the coronavirus (only 0, 3% of the 1,100 million doses administered worldwide were applied in low-income countries).

Most of them are opposed by more developed countries, many of which are headquarters of large pharmaceutical companies like Switzerland, Japan or Australia, although the United States. Until yesterday, reluctant to the proposal, he changed his position yesterday while the countries that make up the EU began to be more open to this possibility on Wednesday.

Brazil, with Jair Bolsonaro At the top, it was one of the few developing countries to side with critics of the initiative.