Bill Gates made a controversial statement regarding the patents in vaccine technology and has ruffled quite many feathers.
Bill Gates, in an interview with Sky News, 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.”
Gates 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.”
The Microsoft founder has faced flak for making such a statement at a time when nations are grappling with the massive COVID-19 crisis. India is facing an unprecedented surge in Coronavirus cases during the second wave.
Surjitt Sahani
