WTO rules have limited countries' freedom to operate generic COVID-19 medicine production, thus the need for a waiver, not additional constraints.
A health worker prepares a jab of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine during a fourth dose vaccine operation on April 27, 2022, in San Salvador, El Salvador.What is needed is simple—a straightforward waiver, eliminating legal uncertainties, not raising new issues, so that any firm producing any of these badly needed vaccines, treatments and tests does not have to worry about being sued.
No agreement is better than a bad agreement. Negotiators still have time to fix the situation. If the EU, U.K., Switzerland and the U.S. won't agree, at a minimum they must commit to not attacking countries that act to save their citizens as developing countries and emerging markets must take the protection of their citizens in their own hands, doing whatever they can.