French President Emmanuel Macron has again called on richer countries to share doses of the COVID-19 vaccine with poorer countries and criticized the US and UK for “blocking” such transfers.
This is reported by Politico.
“What’s the problem right now? It’s not really about intellectual property; you can give it to a lab that doesn’t know how to produce it — the first problem is the distribution of doses. The second principle of the circulation of vaccines is not to block ingredients and vaccines, today the Anglo-Saxons block a lot of ingredients and vaccines, ” Macron said.
He has repeatedly pushed for vaccines to be considered a global public good and said richer countries should help poorer countries buy and receive doses, as well as produce them.
“I am open on this issue, as I said, we have been fighting for a year to make the vaccine a global public good, and I am glad that we are being followed,” Macron said.
The French president has repeatedly said that wealthier countries that hoard excess doses should donate what they don’t need, given the problems in vaccine production. They should also help pharmaceutical companies transfer their know-how to help create more manufacturing sites around the world that can produce technologically sophisticated vaccines, such as mRNA-based vaccines.
In April, France donated 100,000 doses to Mauritania as part of the international COVAX vaccine initiative.
France only started producing vaccines in March, after it received the technology to produce mRNA vaccines. No French pharmaceutical company or laboratory has yet managed to develop its own vaccine against COVID-19.
Recall that the European Union is ready to consider the US proposal to discuss the abolition of patent protection of vaccines against COVID-19.
