Image Credit: Twitter: @MSF_access

Pretoria, October 14 (RHC)-- In South Africa, protesters gathered outside the embassies of the United States and several European countries, demanding they break a stalemate at the World Trade Organization and suspend patent rights on COVID vaccines. 

The so-called TRIPS waiver was first proposed by India and South Africa over a year ago and is primarily opposed by the U.K., Germany and Switzerland.  The group Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, which joined the protests, says a handful of European governments with strong ties to pharmaceutical corporations are choosing to put shareholder interests over the lives of people across the globe.  MSF added: “The U.S. made a big, bold decision to support this groundbreaking TRIPS waiver, but is now largely absent from the global effort to make it a reality.”

Meanwhile, a dozen Democratic U.S. lawmakers are calling on the Biden administration to share Moderna’s COVID vaccine technology with other countries to expand global vaccine production. The lawmakers note that a contract between Moderna and the federal government grants the U.S. unlimited rights to vaccine data, including all key information needed to produce Moderna’s vaccine. 

The lawmakers add: “Despite receiving huge sums of public funding from American taxpayers, Moderna has refused calls to share its technology, including from the U.S. government.”