<Anchor> The
United States has announced that it will discuss plans to expand the supply of corona vaccines with the World Trade Organization.
The growing criticism of the vaccine sweep is increasing the pressure to abandon the vaccine's intellectual property rights.
This is Washington Correspondent Kim Soo-hyung
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White House Secretary General Ron Klein said that starting this week, the WTO will discuss ways to expand the supply of corona vaccines.
[Ron Klein/Chief of the White House Secretary (CBS News): Catherine Thai, head of the Trade Representative, plans to begin discussions this week on how the World Trade Organization (WTO) will provide more vaccines and more broadly grant production licenses. ]
Representatives of the US Trade Representative will meet with representatives of vaccine companies one after another to hear opinions on the exemption from intellectual property rights, and make a proposal to President Biden in the near future.
Independent Senator Bernie Sanders and nine Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren, sent a public letter to President Biden to press for a temporary waiver of the vaccine's intellectual property rights.
[Senator Bernie Sanders/U.S. Senator: The World Trade Organization has sent a letter to the President to waiver intellectual property rights related to the corona vaccine. This is so that the vaccine supply can quickly expand.]
Pharmaceutical companies are strongly protesting, saying that if the astronomical US government's budgeted corona vaccine's intellectual property rights are waived, its know-how will be intercepted by rivals China and Russia.
There is also an objection that it is not easy to make a safe cloned vaccine.
Amid the global corona vaccine shortage, voices are growing that the Biden government should come up with an alternative to increase the vaccine supply.
(Video coverage: Oh Jeong-sik, video editing: Kim Jong-tae)