June 20, 2022 — The group of 164 countries spent five days negotiating deals which included pledges on health and food security.
The partial intellectual property waiver deal for coronavirus jabs will allow developing countries to produce and export vaccines.
But it will only last five years, and excludes disease treatments and tests.
Director-general of the WTO Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the agreements, reached at a conference in Geneva, would “make a difference to the lives of people around the world”.
“The outcomes demonstrate that the WTO is in fact capable of responding to emergencies of our time,” she added.
The package of the two highest profile deals on the table – aimed at reducing overfishing and sharing Covid vaccine knowledge – was described as “unprecedented” by Ms Okonjo-Iweala.