India welcomes US decision to temporarily waive some TRIPS rules for Covid-19 vaccines

06 May 2021 Evaluate

India has appreciated the Biden administration's decision to support a proposal moved by it and South Africa to temporarily waive some Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) rules amid the coronavirus pandemic. For the past several weeks, India's Ambassador to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu, along with the diplomats from South Africa, had been meeting US lawmakers and officials regarding the proposal.

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said this is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures. Tai said ‘The (Biden) administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines’. A majority of Democratic Congressmen had written to President Joe Biden urging him to back the proposal so that vaccines can be made accessible and affordable.

Sandhu said ‘We also thank the large number of US Senators and Congresspersons who expressed their support. We will continue to work with all stakeholders in the US to collectively fight the global pandemic including through equitable distribution of affordable vaccines for global public health at this critical juncture’. In the past few months, the Indian Embassy had made a focused outreach on the need for equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines in the developing world.

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