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This new partnership between the health regulatory authorities of the EU and Brazil is an important step towards mutual recognition and regulatory harmonisation to improve human and animal health.

Sinopharm received emergency use listing from the World Health Organization (WHO) last Friday, making it eligible for the COVAX programme and bolstering Beijing's push for a bigger role in inoculating the world.

That was up from 1.4 billion doses announced in March.

Western pharmaceutical companies, many of which have received government support to develop vaccines, strongly oppose the transfer of intellectual property to make them.

The solution is to ease restrictions on exporting shots and build more production capacity.

The talks also are likely to focus on a waiver that is significantly narrower in scope and shorter in duration than the one initially proposed by India and South Africa last October.

A potential WTO waiver of patent and trade secret protections for Covid-19 vaccines would leave pharmaceutical companies with limited legal avenues to recover costs.

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Ten WTO meetings in seven months have failed to produce a breakthrough, with 60 proposal sponsors from emerging economies, backed by a chorus of campaign groups, Nobel laureates and former world leaders.

The declines came even as some analysts raised doubts about any near-term pressure on COVID-19 vaccine sales from discussions of waiving intellectual property rights, given the manufacturing complexity and scarcity of raw materials.

If adopted by the World Trade Organisation, the proposal would invite new manufacturers that lack essential know-how and oversight from the inventors to crowd out established contractors.

Millions of doses of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine produced by Emergent BioSolutions have been held back in Europe, South Africa and Canada as a precaution.

Novavax said it will manufacture and ship 350 million shots itself. India's Serum Institute (SII) will provide the remainder of the 1.1 billion shots to COVAX through a separate agreement.

The European Union on Thursday backed a U.S. proposal to discuss waiving patent protections for COVID-19 vaccines, but drugmakers and some other governments opposed the idea, saying it would not solve global inoculation shortages.

Drugmakers said President Joe Biden's support for waiving patents of COVID-19 vaccines could disrupt a fragile supply chain and that rich countries should instead share more generously with the developing world.