GENEVA, May 5 (AFP) - The World Trade Organization chief called on Wednesday (May 5) for international agreement on how to ensure more equal access to COVID-19 vaccines, amid an ongoing standoff over a proposed patent waiver for the jabs.

"The way the WTO handles this matter is critical," Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told country representatives taking part a meeting of the WTO general council, the organisation's main decision-making body.

"We need to have a sense of urgency on how we approach this issue of response to COVID-19 because the world is watching," she said, describing equitable access to the tools to fight the pandemic as the "moral and economic issue of our time".

The global trade body has for months been facing calls led by India and South Africa to temporarily remove the intellectual property protections on COVID-19 vaccines, in a move proponents say would help boost production in developing countries that so far have received far fewer jabs.

But that notion has until now met fierce opposition from pharmaceutical giants and their host countries, which insist the patents are not the main roadblocks to scaling up production, and warn the move could hamper innovation.

Okonjo-Iweala, who became the first woman and first African to take the helm of the WTO on March 1, has not taken a position on whether the waiver is the way forward, but has insisted that countries need to agree on a common path that will help resolve the issue of inequal access to the vaccines.