Five pharmaceutical companies in China are to make generic antiviral drugs for Covid-19 treatment. They are among 35 companies approved by the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) to make generic versions of Pfizer’s Paxlovid and/or its key ingredient nirmatrelvir.
The MPP signed a licensing agreement with Pfizer last November to make Paxlovid quickly available at affordable prices to supply low and middle-income countries, China not among them.
Pfizer is expected to generate US$22 billion in 2022 from sales of Paxlovid, and the global market for COVID-19 treatment is estimated to exceed US$20 billion by 2030.
