What would it take to vaccinate the world against #COVID-19?
▻https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-09-vaccinate-world-covid-.html
There are generally two possible approaches to getting shots in arms around the world more readily, says Brook Baker, professor of law at Northeastern and a senior policy analyst for Health GAP (Global Access Project).
The first one, which he describes as the “status quo,” relies on drug companies to increase their capacities to manufacture vaccines and be willing to share doses to lower-income countries without increasing the prices. But for now, he says, that system is encouraging rich countries to buy up doses while the companies are largely not compelled to share with places that can’t pay as much.
The other approach, he says, would be for governments to force drug companies to share their intellectual property around COVID-19 vaccines. Essentially, they would need to share the recipe with other people who wanted to make the life-saving vaccine.
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[..,] the continual emergence of variants of the virus elevates the threat that the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to devastate the globe, and raises the sense of urgency to shrink the sizes of unvaccinated communities around the world.
“We can’t continue with business as usual. We can’t guarantee the companies the right to control their intellectual property and not share technology. We need to utilize all the underutilized capacity,” he says. “Each month that we wait, thousands more people die. So each month of delay is counted in real people’s lives.”