Nairobi, 13 May 2022 (TDI): Oxfam released a statement in response to President Biden’s second COVID-19 Summit promise. It reacted to the licensing of publicly owned medical technologies.
These include the stabilized spike protein for use by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) through the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP).
Robbie Silverman, Oxfam America’s Senior Manager of Private Sector Advocacy, made the following statement:
“Today’s announcement that the US will share its technology with the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool sets a welcome and bold example for the sharing of essential technologies we all need.
Now we need to see this kind of leadership from the US at the WTO. We hope today’s announcement encourages similar moves on other US-funded technologies and spurs major vaccine manufacturers to heed the US’s example.
Much more can be done to ensure that everyone, everywhere is protected in this ongoing pandemic. The US should also urgently step up its funding commitments at least to the full $5 billion requested.
Even with this little bit of progress, we still urgently need a WTO TRIPS waiver that waives intellectual property for vaccines, tests, and treatments to ensure that all countries have the technology and resources to vaccinate, test, and treat people regardless of where they live.
There is indeed so much more to do. At the current rate, it will take another two and a half years for low-income countries to be able to vaccinate 70% of their populations with an initial two doses. And this is simply unjust.”
2nd Global COVID-19 Summit
The second Global COVID-19 Summit was co-hosted by the US, Belize, Germany, Indonesia, and Senegal. Partners and organizations from all across the world attended the meeting.
This was done to speed up efforts to deliver vaccines to the people, improve access to tests and treatments, protect the health, workforce, and finances, and prepare for future pandemics and other health crises.
