BRUSSELS. — A World Health Organization-led program to ensure poorer countries get fair access to COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments aims to secure antiviral drugs for patients with mild symptoms for as little as $10 per course, a draft document seen by Reuters says.
Merck & Co’s MRK.N experimental pill molnupiravir is likely to be one of the drugs, and other drugs to treat mild patients are being developed.
The document, which outlines the goals of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) until September next year, says that the program wants to deliver about 1 billion COVID-19 tests to poorer nations, and procure drugs to treat up to 120 million patients globally, out of about 200 million new cases it estimates in the next 12 months.
The plans highlight how the WHO wants to shore up supplies of drugs and tests at a relatively low price after losing the vaccine race to wealthy nations which scooped up a huge share of the world’s supplies, leaving the world’s poorest countries with few shots.
A spokesperson for the ACT-A said the document, dated Oct. 13, was still a draft under consultation and declined to comment on its content before it is finalized. The document will also be sent to global leaders ahead of a G20 summit in Rome at the end of this month.
The ACT-A asks the G20 and other donors for additional funding of $22.8 billion until September 2022 which will be needed to buy and distribute vaccines, drugs and tests to poorer nations and narrow the huge gaps in supply between wealthy and less advanced countries. Donors have so far pledged $18.5 billion to the program.
The financial requests are based on detailed estimates about the price of drugs, treatments and tests, which will account for the program’s biggest expenses alongside the cost of distributing vaccines.
Although it does not explicitly cite molnupiravir, the ACT-A document expects to pay $10 dollar per course for “novel oral antivirals for mild/moderate patients”. — Reuters
