Thirty countries led by Costa Rica and the World Health Organization launched an initiative on Friday aimed at sharing vaccines, medicines and diagnostic tools to tackle the global coronavirus pandemic.
While the developing nations’ push, called the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool, was welcomed by groups including Doctors Without Borders, a drug industry alliance questioned if it would really boost collaboration or broaden access to COVID-19 medicines.
The WHO effort comes amid concerns rich countries pumping resources into finding vaccines – more than 100 are in development – will muscle their way to the front of the queue, once a candidate succeeds.