Ottawa must reverse its policy to protect vaccine patents, so more countries can produce their own vaccines and prevent variants of COVID-19 from developing, says the NDP’s health critic.
G7 health ministers, including Canada’s Jean-Yves Duclos, attended an urgent meeting on Monday to discuss the emergence of the highly mutated COVID variant, Omicron.
Because Ottawa isn’t supporting the TRIPS waiver proposal, which would give poorer countries access to information on how to make the vaccines, NDP MP Don Davies said significant parts of the world will remain unvaccinated, and the likelihood that a variant of concern develops will increase.