U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has agreed to a license-sharing deal that would allow its experimental covid-19 drug to be manufactured more widely around the globe. It’s an agreement that the company says could give more than half of the world’s population access to the treatment, even as Pfizer rebuffs calls to grant poorer countries access to its coronavirus vaccine formula.
The company said earlier this month that the drug, a pill regimen called paxlovid, reduced the risk of covid hospitalization or death by 89 percent when administered within three days of the onset of symptoms. It has not yet received regulatory approval in the United States, but Pfizer said that it plans to seek authorization from the Food and Drug Administration as soon as possible.
Pfizer will also forgo royalties in low-income countries and waive them in others, so long as covid-19 remains an international public health emergency, the statement said.
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“Oral antiviral treatments can play a vital role in reducing the severity of COVID-19 infections, decreasing the strain on our healthcare systems and saving lives,” said Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chairman and CEO in a statement.
