At a time when the Biden administration is facing increasing domestic and international pressure to do more to support countries around the world in dealing with the New Crown epidemic, U.S. Trade Representative David Deitch met Monday (April 26, 2021) with the heads of two major pharmaceutical companies to discuss exemptions from WTO rules protecting patents on related technologies to deal with the New Crown pandemic.
A statement issued by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said Dike met separately with the heads of Pfizer Inc. and AstraZeneca’s U.S. division to discuss the production of the New Crown vaccine and proposed exemptions from WTO provisions protecting intellectual property rights on the New Crown vaccine and related medical products.
India and South Africa, which have been hard hit by the New Crown outbreak, made the proposal to the World Trade Organization last October, and the WTO is scheduled to meet Friday for consultations on the proposal.
The former U.S. Trump administration and some other pharmaceutical majors had opposed the proposal, but as the new crown epidemic in India worsened severely, the Biden administration came under pressure from domestic politicians and civil society groups, as well as the international community, to provide more vaccines to developing countries while allowing other countries to produce more vaccines using technology patented by the U.S. and big Western pharmaceutical companies.
The USTR statement did not mention whether Dyche urged Pfizer and AstraZeneca to let countries like India use the patents to produce much-needed vaccines during the meeting, but she expressed deep sympathy for the plight of the Indian people and reiterated that the Biden administration’s number one priority is to save lives and end the New Crown pandemic in the United States and around the world.
Major U.S. manufacturers of the New Crown vaccine had warned U.S. officials that the temporary withdrawal of patent protection for the New Crown vaccine would benefit China and Russia, saying they were using the new U.S. technology to develop other vaccines and new herbs to treat cancer and heart disease to compete with U.S. drugmakers and harm U.S. interests.
A statement from the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said Dyche and the drugmakers’ executives promised to stay in communication on the issue.
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