Archiving the Pandemic
CES (com)vida 2020
US and UK’ lead push against global patent pool for Covid-19 drugs
Sarah Boseley
The Guardian
Overview
The race for drugs and for a vaccine for the new coronavirus does not seem to have brought changes in the race for patents and the demand for priority access to new resources from Northern countries, especially those where the big pharmaceutical companies, supported by the states in which they are headquartered, have greater importance and weight in the economy. The proposals for an agreement for a patent pooling, which would allow access to medicines and vaccines for the population of all countries, in the North and in the South, is thus at risk of following the path of previous attempts, such as that of guaranteeing universal access to antiretrovirals for the treatment of AIDS in the 1990s.
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