Amid the unprecedented surge in Covid-19 infections during the second wave in India, Tech mogul and philanthropist Bill Gates made a controversial statement regarding the patents in Covid-19 vaccine technology. He said the Covid-19 vaccine formula should not be shared with India and other developing nations.
In an interview with Sky News, Gates was asked if it would be possible to change the intellectual property law so as to enable the formula for COVID vaccines to be shared. However, he denied sharing the formulae with developing nations and said, well, there’s only so many vaccine factories in the world and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines. And moving something that had never been done — moving vaccine, say, a from a (Johnson & Johnson) factory into a factory in India — it’s novel — it’s only because of our grants and expertise that can happen at all.
The Microsoft founder said the reason behind holding things back in terms of global vaccine rollout, is not intellectual property. It’s not like there’s some idle vaccine factory, with regulatory approval, that makes magically safe vaccines. You know, you’ve got to do the trail on these things. Every manufacturing process needs to be looked at in a very careful way.
Gates has faced a huge backlash for making such a statement at a time when nations are grappling with the massive Covid-19 pandemic.
India reported 3,86,452 fresh COVID-19 cases, the highest ever single-day spike, taking the caseload to 1,87,62,976 on Friday, as per data by the Union Health Ministry.