The US considers revoking the vaccine intellectual property shield

The White House is considering whether to revoke the protection shield for anti-Covid vaccines produced in the US, created in defense of intellectual property rights.

This was reported by some US media.

The move would allow other countries to replicate existing vaccines, thereby meeting growing concerns that only a handful of rich countries have the right to disproportionate amounts of doses compared to global availability.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi would then write to the White House claiming that intellectual property is made available to everyone.

The shortage of Covid vaccine is a problem in much of the world but not in America, where President Joe Biden is already grappling with the opposite concern: how to manage the surplus of doses, given that by May, if not sooner, in the United States, supplies will exceed demand.

And the pressures, starting from Europe, are strong.

Although at the moment - explains the New York Times - the intention of the White House would be to keep the excess doses for itself, despite the umpteenth appeal from the WHO: to immediately donate at least 10 million vaccines to the international Covax program favor of the poorest countries.

But in Washington, beyond the outstretched hand shown by Biden during the European Council, the situation is assessed with caution.

In fact, too many uncertainties still weigh on the future and on when the pandemic will really be overcome and we can talk about herd immunity.

All the more so since, despite the vaccination campaign traveling at very high rates in America, the number of cases in all the US states returns to rise: 7% more in one week, with an average of 55,000 per day.

And the number of hospitalizations and the number of victims is also rising again, over a thousand every 24 hours.

Forecasts in hand, Biden promised by the end of May to immunize the entire American adult population, about 260 million people.

This is compared to a number of ordered doses that - including Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson - could cover up to 400 million people, 70 million more than the entire US population.

Choosing who to eventually allocate the excess doses to can become a political problem for the US administration, considering that despite the international Covax program there are at least 30 countries where not even a dose has yet been administered, with three quarters of the available doses going to only 10 countries.