The pharmaceutical industry is lobbying the Biden administration to impose sanctions on countries producing COVID-19 vaccines without industry permission. Governments worldwide are considering implementing temporary exemptions on traditional intellectual property laws to allow unfettered production and distribution of vaccines, in order to prevent the pandemic dragging on.
Academics at Duke University have projected that the world’s richest nations, representing only 16% of the global population, have already secured over half of the available vaccine production contracts. Giving in to the pharmaceutical lobby would prolong the pandemic in poorer developing nations.