Pharmaceutical companies called on the US government not to abandon the patent for the vaccine against coronavirus. It is reported by Financial Times.
As noted, the lobbyists of the pharmaceuticals conducted several private meetings with officials from the sphere of trade, as well as with representatives of the White House. In the course of them, they indicated that new vaccine manufacturing technologies can fall into the hands of the authorities of Russia and China. Companies fear that Moscow and Beijing will use the platform for their own purposes to be used in the development of their drugs from the COVID-19 company Pfizer and Moderna.
Speech, in particular, is about technology based on matrix ribonucleic acid (MRNA). This method of creating vaccines has been widely used during coronavirus pandemic. Scientists assume that in the future, cancer and cardiovascular diseases can be treated with mRNA-based drugs.
Financial Times indicates that the American President Joe Biden Unlike his predecessor Donald Trump considers the possibility of supporting the temporary abolition of patents for vaccines. Thus, the representative of the United States at the trade negotiations Catherine Tai in April stated at a meeting of the World Trade Organization that the United States and the whole world should learn lessons from the fight against HIV and COVID-19 and revise the current rules. She added that the government and the private sector are obliged to contribute to the development of trade aspects of intellectual property rights.
In October 2020, India and South Africa called on states producing vaccines from coronavirus, temporarily abandon their patent on them. This step was supposed to provide access to the vaccine residents of poor countries. The World Health Organization and more than 60 countries supported this initiative. However, the Trump administration, together with the European Union, Great Britain and Switzerland opposed the proposed measure.