Along with fellow invitee South Africa, India has submitted a WTO proposal for waiver of patents and other intellectual property rights (IPRs) for Covid-19 drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and other technologies till global herd immunity is achieved. The proposal is backed by 130 countries, while the US supports patent waiver for vaccines. But other parties, including the EU, still oppose dilution of IPRs. The EU favours minimal export restrictions – in March, the EU introduced tighter norms for export of Covid vaccines – and use of compulsory licences, which is complicated and limited. Consensus at the WTO seems a long way off. India must offer a Plan B, a vaccine partnership, in which India shares know-how to manufacture indigenously developed and approved vaccines such as Covaxin with production units in developing countries. Invite G7 countries to provide requisite material and financial support.
Here again, there is no guarantee that the ingredients needed for vaccine production would be available, free of shortage or export restrictions. India must commence reverse-engineering the ingredients and produce them at scale, and worry about the legal ramifications later. As in the case of retrovirals for HIV-AIDS two decades ago, a fait accompli on the vaccine front that saves millions of lives and output worth trillions of dollars would have moral power that trounces patent rights.