WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the White House announced a second White House Global COVID-19 Summit to be held May 12. The Trade Justice Education Fund previously organized a 83-group letter to President Joe Biden in February outlining specific priorities for such a summit. Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of the Trade Justice Education Fund, released the following statement:
“The demand for booster shots in the face of wave after wave of COVID variants makes the need for increased global mRNA vaccine production even greater today than it was at the time of the first White House summit last fall when the definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ was a two-shot regimen.
“To ensure ongoing access to the medical goods needed to save lives and head off future variants, this new summit must go beyond pledges to donate more vaccine doses and take concrete action to ensure the waiver of intellectual property barriers standing in the way of increased production of COVID vaccines, tests and treatments.
“President Biden should come into the summit demanding a comprehensive TRIPS waiver at the WTO that covers all forms of monopoly protections for vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics. He should also commit to publicly sharing vaccine-making recipes that were developed with U.S. taxpayer support by incentivizing pharmaceutical companies to share vaccine and treatment-making patent rights, data rights and technical know-how with the many qualified producers around the world. The U.S. should also announce financial and other support to expand vaccine, test and treatment manufacturing capacity in Africa, Latin America and Asia to increase production capacity.”