COVID Vaccine Patents

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:11 pm on 14 December 2021.

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Photo of Jenny Rathbone Jenny Rathbone Labour 2:11, 14 December 2021

Thank you. First, I'd like to refer Members and the public to my declared shares that I still have in AstraZeneca, although not for much longer. I'm disappointed that neither AstraZeneca nor Pfizer have responded to my request for an explanation as to why, in the middle of a global pandemic, these multinational drug companies haven't waived their patents on these life-saving vaccines. There is, of course, a precedent to this, for waiving the patents on HIV drugs when Nelson Mandela exposed their failure to do that, which caused a global outcry. In the United States, the National Institutes of Health is taking Moderna to court. Are you aware of any plans by the UK Government to take AstraZeneca to court to force them to do the right thing, given that no-one will be safe from COVID until enough people have been vaccinated across the world to suppress COVID to manageable levels?