Vaccine & Right to Health Covid-19 Perspective

Abhishek Mahajan
Advocate, Supreme Court of India (Associate in the chamber of Learned ASG Mr Vikramjit Banerjee)
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Shashank Maheshwari
Student (Masters in Law), National Law University, Delhi

Volume III, Issue IV, 2020

Coronavirus has caused devastating effects both in terms of economic and health around the globe. No country be it the United States or India is left untouched by this notorious virus. Many Pharma companies around the world situation are running against the time to find the vaccine for this virus before it can cause more mayhem. However, the question comes up that for instance, any pharma company is successful in developing a vaccine against the virus, so can it have patent rights over the same? Moreover, having patent rights also creates a kind of monopoly in the market, thus helping the patent owner to earn huge profits through its vaccine because the price of the vaccine shall be high, which results in poor people deprived of the same. There are precedents both in international as well as domestic level including laws, judgments which provide states that the states have over-riding power on the patents, to help the poor people get the vaccine at the cheapest rate possible.