-The Hindu Council leaves the 5% tax levied on vaccines unchanged. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council on Saturday decided to waive the tax levied on two critical drugs against COVID-19 and mucormycosis — tocilizumab and amphotericin B — and reset the tax rate to 5% for 14 major pandemic relief items, till September 30. Non-BJP-ruled States registered a strong dissent, terming the continued imposition of GST on critical COVID supplies and...
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They’ve done nothing: Haryana’s Titoli village lashes out at state’s COVID-19 response -Prabhjit Singh
-CaravanMagazine.in On 27 April, the village of Titoli in Haryana’s Rohtak district witnessed at least nine cremations in a single day. On 5 May, the entire village, which has a population of 13,000, was declared a containment zone after local media reported that there had been 28 “mysterious” deaths in two days. Most of the dead had been suffering from fever, coughs and colds. But when a fellow reporter and I...
More »The AIDS fight offers a COVID vaccine patent pathway -Murphy Halliburton
-The Hindu There are recognised ways to overcome the patents hurdle, ensuring social justice and boosting the COVID-19 battle In order to achieve global herd immunity and prevent new strains of COVID-19 from emerging, possibly for years to come, vaccines need to be affordable and available in massive quantities throughout the globe. This can happen through patent owners voluntarily licensing their products to other companies, especially Indian producers who are experienced at...
More »On Covid patents waiver, health cannot be held hostage to profit -Rajshree Chandra
-The Indian Express Innovation in vaccine production can have an impact only if it is accessible to all. Patents and access to life-saving drugs has always been an emotive and contentious issue. The right to healthy life is a moral minimum, and to find a rational basis to deny it is deeply offensive to the idea of life itself. At the same time, Pharma corporations and institutions claim patents are a just...
More »A TRIPS waiver is useful but not a magic pill -Prabhash Ranjan
-The Hindu The U.S.-supported move will have an effect if countries simultaneously address non-IP bottlenecks among other things The United States has finally relented and declared its support for a temporary waiver of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement for COVID-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). In October 2020, India and South Africa, at the WTO, proposed waiving Sections 1, 4, 5, and 7 of Part II...
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