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Good morning. An attempt to find a compromise on vaccine patents, spreading variants and continued pressure on China. Here’s what’s moving markets.
The battle over waiving rules on vaccine patents has sparked into life this week. The World Trade Organization is now stepping in to try to find a compromise. The Biden administration embraced the plans but Germany's Angela Merkel expressed opposition, warning that it would create "severe complications" for the production of vaccines in the future by removing the profit incentive for drugmakers to aggressively pursue research and development. Pharmaceutical companies, for their part, saw their share prices take a beating this week. And the world is becoming more reliant on Chinese vaccines, even with the U.S. positioning itself as the champion of wider access.