Elizabeth Warren backs U.S. patent waiver for COVID-19 vaccines: ‘This is a crisis’

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren breaks down the need for the U.S. to lift vaccine patent protections for COVID-19 vaccines.

Video Transcript

ELIZABETH WAREN: Look this is not a time to be protecting the multi billions of dollars profits for these companies. We put up taxpayer dollars to do the original research. We put up taxpayer dollars either in the form of direct grants or in the form of promising to buy the goods when they developed these vaccines. We put a lot of public money into this and we're glad to have public private partnership in this but this is a crisis. And as a humanitarian matter and frankly it's just a matter of our international relations. We need to be out there getting those vaccines into the arms of as many human beings as possible. Not doing what a handful of already billionaire drug companies want us to do in order to protect their profits.