US President, Joe Biden, recently suggested that the US Government would be in favour of a waiver of patent protection surrounding COVID vaccine development. Whilst the US is only one country at the WTO and they generally only act on consensus, it will certainly make other countries think hard.
To be honest, though, I can't say I'm in favour of a patent waiver here. Avoiding the patents of other pharmaceutical companies isn't the "hard problem" in the pandemic environment we find ourselves in; getting hold of the ingredients to manufacture at global scale is.