Nirmala Sitharaman: There can’t be vaccine nationalism

Stressing that there cannot be any vaccine nationalism, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday urged countries to share technologies on Covid vaccines. She also called for examining Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement in the light of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Countries will have to be open about sharing vaccine-based technologies. The TRIPS agreement will have to be looked at in the context of the pandemic. There cannot be any more vaccine nationalism, countries will have to be flexible about it,” Sitharaman said at the annual meet of the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The TRIPS agreement is a legal pact between all member nations of the World Trade Organization. It establishes minimum standards for regulation by governments of different forms of intellectual property as applied to nationals of other WTO member nations.