Edit/ Seham Abedin

Bill Gates rejected a proposal to waive patent restrictions on COVID-19 vaccines, saying he did not believe intellectual property had anything to do with prolonged global efforts to curb the epidemic.

Vaccines developed by pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, Moderna, enjoy global protection under the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Given the scarcity of medicines, there have been growing calls from countries such as India and South Africa, international relief organizations and public figures to waive this protection so that poor countries can have better access to medicines.

Bill Gates, one of the most famous figures in the global vaccination campaign, thinks it's a C idea.

When asked whether divesting intellectual property protection from vaccine prescriptions would be useful, the Microsoft founder responded with "no."

"What is holding things back in this case is not intellectual property.

It's not like there's an inactive vaccine factory that, with the approval of regulators, magically makes safe vaccines.

You know, you have to experiment with these things.

Every process must be looked at very carefully.

In a related context, Gates cited his Foundation's experience in helping to regulate vaccine production in developing countries such as India.

The fact that poor countries would likely have access to supplies from rich countries once their populations were immunized was a success.

"It usually takes a decade in global health for a vaccine to reach the rich world and enter poor countries.

The ACT-Access mechanism, supported by Bill & Melinda Gates (Bill & Melinda Gates), aims to provide "fair access" to anti-Cofid tools - but also respects exclusive intellectual property rights

But Gates seems to have been ignoring the alternative solution, known as Covid-19 Technology Access Pool, or C-TAP, which would bring together open-source techniques on how to deal with the epidemic.