WHO asks two Chinese vaccine manufacturers to share patents

The additional patents aim to address supply issues.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is encouraging two major Chinese vaccine developers, Sinovac and CNBG, to share details of their related patents to help tackle the vaccination inequities around the world, particularly in Africa.

The WHO is hoping that companies will share their information and patents via the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), a platform for sharing COVID-19 treatments, tests, and vaccines. This would allow local companies to carry out local manufacturing of vaccines with a royalty paid to the original drug developer. 

Previous attempts to encourage Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, and AstraZeneca have been rebuffed. Currently, only India’s Bharat Biotech is contributing to the C-TAP platform.