Generic drug manufacturers may be granted sub-licensing to produce the treatment of the pharmaceutical giant, which will not receive royalties on the sale of its pill in poor countries.
Le Monde with AFP
The American Pharmaceutical Giant Pfizer has signed a voluntary license agreement that must broadcast its pill against CVIV-19 – when it is allowed – beyond rich countries. The announcement was made jointly Tuesday, November 16 by Pfizer and the “medicine-patent community” Patent Pool (MPP), created by UNITAID, the international organization of drug purchases. Generic drug manufacturers “who are granted sub-licenses will be able to provide the new drug in association with ritonavir [a drug used against the AIDS virus] to 95 countries, covering up to about 53% of the world’s population” , said a spokesman for Unitaid, Hervé Verhoosen, during a briefing in Geneva.
The agreement includes all countries with “lower average” and “lower” income as designated by the World Bank, but also the countries to “higher average income” in sub-Saharan Africa and those who have accessed this status In the last five years, said Hervé Verhoosen. Pfizer will not receive sales royalties in low-income countries, and renounce royalties in all countries covered by the Agreement as long as CVIV-19 remain classified “International Public Health Emergency” by the Organization World Health (WHO).
promising results
In early November, Pfizer, who markets with German Biontech one of the most effective vaccines against COVID, had revealed that, among adults at high risk of developing a serious form of the disease, its oral antiviral disease PF-07321332 was effective at 89% to prevent the risk of hospitalization or death, according to intermediate clinical trial results.
With this agreement, Pfizer works in the footsteps of his competitor Merck, who has concluded a similar pact with the MPP for his own anti-oral anti-covid, molnupiravir. The latter also displays a high rate of efficiency. These promising results still have to be confirmed, “said Esteban Burrone, responsible for policy development at the MPP, in an interview at the France-Presse Agency. But, if so, availability “will be a matter of months,” he said.
Pfizer and other anti-Covid vaccine manufacturers are accused of having privileged profits by selling countries that have the means, and thus participate in immunization inequality between rich and poor countries. For the time being, the price of the new treatment is not known, said Burrone, but according to doctors without borders (MSF) it will be around 700 dollars in rich countries, such as for Molnupiravir, and its price will be adapted for others.
These two antivirals act by reducing the ability of a virus to replicate, thus braking the disease. Like molnupiravir, the treatment of Pfizer, which will be marketed under the name Paxlovid, must be administered within three to five days of the appearance of symptoms. The United Kingdom has become the first country on November 4 to allow Molnupiravir.
These treatments are easier to manufacture than vaccines, are not subjected to the cold chain and can be taken by the patient at home, even if having to use them quickly assumes that tests are available and that The diagnosis is confirmed by a doctor. For Mr. Burrone, one of the crucial aspects is that these treatments can help relieve health structures by preventing hospitalizations: “It changes the situation.”
MSF, for its part, said “discouraged” by this partial agreement which excludes Argentina, Brazil, or China, Malaysia and Thailand, which have important generic manufacturing capabilities.
