Bill Gates says COVID vaccine formula should not be shared with India, developing nations, sparks row

Photo courtesy: Reuters

New Delhi: India is witnessing the second wave of coronavirus. The country has been severely impacted by the COVID-19 and the world community started extending its support. In a recent development, the tech giant and philanthropist Bill Gates has made a controversial statement regarding the patents in vaccine technology and is facing heat from all around. 

The entire world is involved in curbing down the coronavirus and developing vaccines for it. As per the reports, amid this massive crisis, Bill Gates is being accused of withholding vaccine recipes from other countries. Bill Gates in an interview with Sky News was asked if it would be possible to change the intellectual property law so as to enable the recipe for COVID Vaccines to be shared, he clearly denied sharing the formulas with developing nations.

When asked about the explanation to his answer, Bill Gates said, "Well, there's only so many vaccine factories in the world and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines. And s moving something that had never been done -- moving vaccine, say, a from a (Johnson & Johnson) factory into a factory in India -- its novel -- it's only because of our grants and expertise that that can happen at all."

The Serum Institute of India (SII), the largest institute in the country has been manufacturing COVID-19 vaccine Covishield under a contract with AstraZeneca. 

The reason behind holding "things back" in terms of global vaccine rollout, continued Bill Gates, "is not intellectual property. It's not like there's some idle vaccine factory, with regulatory approval, that makes magically safe vaccines. You know, you've got to do the trail on these things. Every manufacturing process needs to be looked at in a very careful way."

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has made fortune largely through the intellectual property laws that turned his computer software innovations into billions of dollars of wealth. The statement from Bill Gates is criticised across the world.