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Protesters hold a sign reading “sharing is caring” to call for waiving patents of COVID-19 vaccines in front of the National Mall in Washington on Wednesday. (AFP/Yonhap News)

The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it supports temporarily suspending intellectual property (IP) protections for COVID-19 vaccines. While pharmaceutical companies and the EU remain opposed to the plan, the US’s pivot on the issue is likely to energize the debate over the patent waiver requested by developing countries.

“This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures,” said Katherine Tai, the US Trade Representative, in a statement on Wednesday.

“The administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines.”

“We will actively participate in text-based negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) needed to make that happen,” Tai went on to say.

Tai said in an interview with Bloomberg that the US will seek to persuade other WTO members to support suspending IP protections for COVID-19 vaccines.

A temporary waiver of vaccine patents would make it possible to produce generics worldwide, greatly increasing the supply of vaccines.

But Tai noted in the statement that “those negotiations will take time given the consensus-based nature of the [WTO] and the complexity of the issues involved.”

Pharmaceutical companies are firmly opposed to a patent waiver, and some countries are defending the interests of domestic pharmaceutical firms. The EU, the UK, Japan, Switzerland, and Brazil remain opposed to the patent waiver.

While vaccine manufacturers have refrained from responding, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) issued a statement opposing the proposal, describing the US’s decision as “disappointing.”

“A waiver is the simple but the wrong answer to what is a complex problem,” the IFPMA said.

However, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted Thursday that the EU is “open to discuss any other effective and pragmatic solution.”

“In this context we are ready to assess how the US proposal could help achieve that objective.”

By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]