Britain, Australia and South Korea on Friday reached agreements with the pharma company Pfizer to purchase its antiviral pills for treating COVID-19 once approved by regulators.
Pfizer's antiviral pill, known as PF-07321332, hasn't been approved for sale in the United States, says Roma Nair, a spokesperson for the company. The United States has, however, agreed to buy 1.7 million molnupiravir courses from the pharma company Merck. The pills developed by Merck and Pfizer could be a turning point in the fight against the coronavirus because they do not require a hospital visit and are reasonably inexpensive compared with the current antibody treatments. Both medications are meant to stop viruses from replicating.
Australia will buy 500,000 courses of Pfizer’s pill and Britain will purchase 250,000. France has ordered 50,000 courses of Merck’s molnupiravir pills and the Philippines said that it had procured 300,000 courses of molnupiravir.
South Korea secured 70,000 courses of Pfizer’s pill, the health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
On October 5 Australia announced that it would buy 300,000 courses of molnupiravar. Merck said that it hoped to produce 10 million courses by the end of 2021. Thailand, Taiwan and Malaysia are in talks to buy the antiviral pill from Merck. Merck has said that its pill cuts the risk of hospitalization and death by 50 per cent, CNET reported.
Britain, on October 20, said that it had secured deals with Merck and Pfizer for their antiviral pills. The Pfizer pill, designed to inhibit an enzyme that causes the virus to multiply, will be administered with a low dose of ritonavir. Britain has secured 250,000 courses of PF-07321332/ritonavir. South Korea has secured 20,000 courses of Merck's molnupiravir. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) had earlier said it was also in taljs with Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG, which is racing to develop an easy-to-administer antiviral pill for COVID-19, a Reuters report reads.
