A Paris summit seeking to boost financing in Africa amid the Covid-19 pandemic on Tuesday called for the lifting of vaccine patents to allow their manufacture on the continent, French President Emmanuel Macron said. "We are asking the WHO, the WTO and the Medicines Patent Pool to remove all these constraints in terms of intellectual property which blocks the production of certain types of vaccines," Macron said at the end of the summit attended by African leaders and officials from global financial institutions. Citing the slow pace of vaccination as a major problem for the continent, Macron staked out an aim of vaccinating 40 percent of people in Africa by the end of 2021. leb-sjw/jh/ach