Zeynep Tufekci

Waiving vaccine patents is fine, but unless it’s tied to a process that actually increases the supply of vaccines, it’s a little bit more than expressing thoughts and prayers after a tragedy. Officials from all nations that produce vaccines need to gather for an emergency meeting immediately to decide how to commandeer whatever excess capacity they have to produce more, through whatever means necessary. Because of the threat of increased transmissibility, and since the evidence at hand indicates that all of the vaccines, even the Chinese and Russian versions, appear to be highly effective against severe disease or worse, the focus should be on manufacturing and distributing the highest number of doses possible as fast as possible.

By Zeynep Tufekci

Dr. Tufekci is a contributing Opinion writer who has extensively examined the Covid-19 pandemic.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/opinion/covid-vaccine-variants.html