The U.S. authorities can pay drugmaker Pfizer practically $5.3 billion for 10 million treatment programs of its potential COVID-19 treatment if regulators approve it.
Pfizer requested the Meals and Drug Administration on Tuesday to authorize the experimental pill, referred to as Paxlovid.
Earlier this month, the corporate mentioned Paxlovid lower the danger of hospitalization and demise by practically 90% in folks with gentle to reasonable coronavirus infections. The drugmaker studied its pill in individuals who had been unvaccinated and who confronted the best threat from the virus because of age or well being issues, reminiscent of weight problems.
The FDA is already reviewing a competing pill from Merck and can maintain a public assembly on it later this month.
The worth for Pfizer’s potential treatment quantities to about $529 per course. The U.S. has already agreed to pay roughly $700 per course of Merck’s drug for about 1.7 million therapies.
Pfizer mentioned Thursday the value being paid by the U.S. authorities displays the excessive variety of treatment programs bought by 2022.
Pfizer, which additionally produces a coronavirus vaccine, earlier on Tuesday introduced that it has signed a deal with a U.N.-backed group to permit different producers to make the COVID-19 pill, a transfer that might make the treatment accessible to greater than half of the world’s inhabitants.
In the meantime, the Labor Division’s Occupational Security and Well being Administration mentioned it’s suspending its enforcement of the Biden administration’s new guidelines ordering bigger employers to both require that their staff get vaccinated in opposition to COVID-19 or bear weekly testing.
The federal company mentioned it’s complying with a court docket ruling that briefly halts the regulation for large employers, in accordance with the OSHA web site the place the announcement was first posted.
