Waive Covid vaccine property rules
Some 170 former country leaders and Nobel prize laureates have called on the US to waive intellectual property rules for Covid-19 vaccines to give poorer countries faster access to inoculations as coronavirus cases are alarmingly surging again in some parts of the globe.
In an open letter to President Joe Biden published late Wednesday, the group said it was "gravely concerned by the very slow progress" in scaling up global vaccine access and inoculation in low- and middle-income countries.
While vaccination rollout in the United States and many wealthier countries was bringing hope to their citizens, "for the majority of the world that same hope is yet to be seen", said the signatories who include Nobel winners Muhammad Yunus, Joseph Stiglitz and Mohamed ElBaradei and former world leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Francois Hollande and Gordon Brown.
The group said it was "encouraged" that the Biden administration was considering a temporary waiver of World Trade Organization (WTO) intellectual property rules during the Covid-19 pandemic, as proposed by South Africa and India.
Meanwhile, people physically inactive for at least two years before the pandemic were more likely to be hospitalised, to require intensive care, and to die, researchers reported Tuesday in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
In another development, a group of experts yesterday said that opening windows and ventilating spaces should be at the heart of efforts to prevent the spread of Covid-19, arguing that confusion over airborne transmission meant this simple measure was being overlooked.
"People are much more likely to become infected in a room with windows that can't be opened or lacking any ventilation system," they said.
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