Merkel defends patent protection for Covid-19 vaccines

Berlin, June 25: German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended patent protection for Covid-19 vaccines in a government statement in the Bundestag or the lower house of Parliament.

"A politically enforced release of patents is, in my opinion, the wrong way to go," Merkel said on Thursday.

She said she was convinced that "we need to increase the production of vaccines on the basis of licenses as quickly as possible".

The world will "continue to depend on vaccines being developed in the future", Merkel said in the German government's statement on the June 24-25 European Council meeting in Brussels.

"This will only succeed if the protection of intellectual property is not overridden but is preserved."

At their summit, the EU's heads of state and government will discuss, among other things, the progress of the Covid vaccination campaign and the global distribution of vaccines.

Merkel emphasised that the decision to jointly procure vaccines in Europe was right.

"Anything else might have given some member states short-term advantages but would have severely disrupted life in the internal market."

Till date, more than 27.8 million people in Germany had been fully vaccinated, bringing the country's vaccination rate to 33.5 per cent, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

More than 43.4 million people received at least one vaccine dose.

"The pandemic can only be defeated globally and the key to this is vaccination," Merkel stressed.

It is therefore important that the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US) aim to distribute 2.3 billion vaccine doses to the developing countries by 2022.