United States signed agreement to purchase millions of lots of a COVID-19 pill

The United States on Wednesday announced an agreement with the Merck laboratory to purchase 1.7 million treatment batches of an experimental antiviral pill against COVID-19, if approved by federal authorities.

The agreement for $ 1.2 billion it’s for medicine molnupiravir, currently in phase 3 of a global clinical trial involving 1,850 people, with results expected in the fall.

“This agreement is as part of Biden’s whole-of-government approach to develop new COVID-19 treatments and meet public health needsSaid the Department of Health and Social Services.

The United States will only conclude the agreement if molnupiravir receives emergency use authorization or full approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on its potential for reducing the risk of hospitalization or death.

Rob Davis, President of Merck, noted that the company “is pleased to partner with the United States government on this new agreement that will provide Americans with COVID-19 access to molnupiravir.”

The laboratory hopes to have over 10 million lots available for five processing days by the end of 2021.

The drug is taken orally in capsule form every 12 hours for 5 days, and one set contains 10 doses in total.

Molnupiravir, which Merck is developing in partnership with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, is one of many investigational oral antivirals tested against COVID-19.

The drug belongs to a type of antivirals called polymerase inhibitors, which act on an enzyme that viruses need to copy their genetic material by introducing mutations that make them unable to replicate.

It has also been shown to be effective for laboratory studies against other viruses such as influenza, Ebola, and Venezuelan equine encephalitis, but it has not been licensed or approved for any of these diseases.

But find effective antiviral drugs it was always a challenge for science. The reason is that viruses are much more diverse than bacteria, even in the way they store their genetic information, some in the form of DNA and others in the form of RNA like SARS-CoV-2.

Promising drug targets for coronaviruses have also been identified, but Development of new drugs takes a long time and – as seen in the pandemic – viruses mutate rapidly, which could mean that when a drug is developed, the ever-changing virus could soon develop resistance to it.

Merck decided to focus on its COVID-19 drugs after two vaccines failed to elicit desired immune responses., which led him to abandon these programs in January.

With information from AFP and Reuters

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