The World Trade Organization (WTO) has decided to postpone “sine die” the XII Ministerial Conference that was scheduled to be held next week due to the travel restrictions that many countries have issued to stop the advance of the omicron variant of the coronavirus COVID-19, informed sources close to the organization.
The decision was made at an emergency meeting of the General Council of the body, after a day in which various governments suspended flights from their countries to southern Africa due to the advance of the omicron variant, considered risky by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The suspension of the important meeting in Geneva is decided when the negotiating groups were finalizing a possible agreement to globally eliminate fisheries subsidies, and a possible suspension of patents to manufacture vaccines and other treatments against COVID-19 was also debated.
One of the countries that launched this proposal to suspend patents was South Africa, the country now most affected by the omicron variant, which worries scientists because of its greater transmissibility and its ease of developing mutations.
The twelfth edition of this ministerial conference, which the WTO holds approximately every two years, had already been suspended due to the pandemic last year, when it was expected to be held in the capital of Kazakhstan, Nursultán.
The trade ministers of the WTO member countries have not met within this organization since the meeting in Buenos Aires, in December 2017.
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