Submission by the South Centre to the USITC hearing on Covid-19 diagnostics and therapeutics

Submission by the South Centre to the USITC hearing on Covid-19 diagnostics and therapeutics 17 March 2023 The South Centre is an intergovernmental organization of 55 developing countries, see www.southcentre.int We fully supported the proposal submitted by India, South Africa and other co-sponsors in March 2020 to temporarily waive certain provisions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of I. [...] See Two years later, it is evident that the waiver, as originally proposed, would have helped to overcome intellectual property barriers to accelerate the manufacturing across regions of medical countermeasures for Covid-19, increasing the global production and lowering the cost for these. [...] Public sector financing and research capacity together with other support measures were at the core of the success in the discovery of Covid-19 vaccines, and likewise for treatments and diagnostics. [...] This situation was evident in the set up and functioning, to date, of the mRNA hub supported by the WHO and based in South Africa. [...] This agreement should include commitment for governments, particularly from developed countries, to temporarily waive the provisions for the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in the TRIPS Agreement, and restrain from pressuring developing countries, including through mechanisms such as the USTR Special 301 report, to refrain from the use of the TRIPS flexibilities to prote.