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Oral medicine is expected to end the epidemic? Expert: also look at India and Africa (part 1)

2021-10-21T04:52:55.084Z


With the end of the second year of the epidemic, a lot of progress has been made in global epidemic prevention. Vaccination rates in many countries have increased significantly, and major breakthroughs have also been made in the research and development of various drugs, especially oral drugs, but high and low incomes


With the end of the second year of the epidemic, a lot of progress has been made in global epidemic prevention. Vaccination rates in many countries have increased significantly. There have also been major breakthroughs in the research and development of various drugs, especially oral drugs. However, vaccination between high- and low-income countries The gap in the rate is still large. Will the distribution of therapeutic drugs aggravate the inequality?


"Hong Kong 01" interviewed Michael Merson, a professor at the Duke University School of Global Health, who had participated in the global infectious disease response work at the World Health Organization (WHO), and made judgments on the current epidemic prevention situation and the effectiveness of oral drugs.


Q: Merck Pharmaceuticals (Merck) recently announced that its antiviral drug Molnupiravir is effective against the new coronavirus, and many scientists also regard it as a major breakthrough.

What do you think of this drug?

Do you think this medicine plays a key role in our epidemic prevention work?

Merson: Yes, I think it will.

Our existing treatment methods for early COVID are either using

*monoclonal antibody drugs

or a

drug

called Remdesivir.

These drugs must be used in a medical setting because they must be injected intravenously or intramuscularly.

The advantage of Molnupiravir is that it can be taken orally.

If you let the patient take it early in the disease, it can reduce the patient's risk of hospitalization by half.

Professor Michael Merson of the School of Global Health at Duke University in the United States has participated in the prevention and control of global acute respiratory infections, AIDS and other diseases at the World Health Organization (WHO).

So this is indeed a big improvement in treatment.

If we can detect COVID patients early, we can greatly reduce the risk of hospitalization and death.

And there are other drugs currently under development, and I know that Pfizer also has them. We will soon have a variety of similar drugs for early treatment of COVID-19.

*Monoclonal antibody drugs find specific antibodies that can effectively neutralize the new coronavirus from the plasma of recovered patients, and then mass-produce the antibodies by cloning a single cell.

At present, AstraZeneca, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly and Company have all developed and produced such drugs.

This year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) urgently authorized the use of drugs developed by AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly on some patients.


Q: From a global perspective, to what extent do you think this medicine can work to make our lives return to normal faster?

Merson: Yes (it will make life return to normal faster).

We can compare the situation with the flu.

For the treatment of influenza, we have the antiviral drug Tamiflu (Tamiflu), and we (in the treatment of influenza) also use this similar method. As long as the medication is used as soon as possible, it can bring great effects to severely ill patients.

So the real question is whether the drug can be affordable and whether it is available everywhere in the world.

Merck & Co. has considerable experience in antiretroviral drugs, and they know they need to ensure that the cost of these drugs in low-income countries is much lower than in countries like the United States.

My understanding is that Merck has signed agreements with eight Indian companies to allow them to produce the drug in India at a low price (the cost)* is

less than US$10 for a course of treatment

.

And I believe that Merck will also sign agreements with other pharmaceutical companies, especially in Africa.

I think that for this medicine to work, we need to make it popular everywhere.

In addition, I have only seen the data reported by the media for the time being, but we have to make sure that the drug has no serious side effects and that people will not develop resistance to it.

So (about this drug) there are still many questions to be answered, but I think Molnupiravir and other similar drugs do offer great hope and can indeed reduce mortality.

*The New York Times quoted an anonymous Indian pharmaceutical company in a report on the 17th that the company was able to produce the drug at a cost of less than US$10 (approximately HK$78) per course of treatment (5 days).


Q: You just mentioned the price of medicines.

Do you think that in the process of promotion of the drug, will there be the significant unfair distribution that we have seen in the process of vaccine supply?

At present, the pharmaceutical company has not announced an exact price, but we look at the purchase price of the US government, which is 700 US dollars (about 5460 Hong Kong dollars) per treatment course, and the price is not cheap.

Merson: This price is unaffordable in many low-income countries.

So reducing the price will be crucial.

I hope that Indian companies can successfully imitate the drug, just like they are producing antiretroviral drugs.

In this way, other Asian regions and Africa can do this, so the price of the drug can be greatly reduced, and the drug can be made available to everyone.

This is of course the goal of (production) of all these antiviral drugs.

As for the current vaccine, the situation is different.

Unfortunately, the production of vaccines, especially the technology required for the production of mRNA vaccines, is not yet universal, at least not currently.

The fixed ingredients required to produce medicines are far less complex than vaccines, and can be produced in many countries.

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Source: hk1

All news articles on 2021-10-21

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