ALLEA, the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, just published a statement on “Vaccination Bottlenecks in the Global South and a Patent Waiver for COVID-19 Vaccines” which you can download here.
Key points of the statement are that it is not ethically acceptable to exclude the Global South from the distribution of vaccines. Also that procedure risks prolonging the pandemic. “Additional and more robust measures with immediate effect should be undertaken to accelerate and improve the production, export and distribution/administration of vaccines”. The patent waiver of COVID-19 vaccines is one important step towards this goal but not the single solution. General “adjustments to patents and trade secret protections” should be adopted by the EU among other things. Read the full ALLEA statement here.