Pfizer to sell 10 million COVID pills to US for $5.3 million

Pfizer, the US pharmaceutical giant that has come up with a pill that can treat COVID-19, said Thursday that it plans to sell 10 million COVID-19 pills to the US government at a cost of $5.3 million. Pfizer’s statement comes just two days after it announced to make its prospective antiviral COVID pill available in the world’s least wealthy nations at a low cost. 

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Pfizer’s COVID-19 pill Paxlovid is said to reduce the risk of hospitalisation in COVID-19 cases or death by 89%, according to the company. Pfizer applied for emergency-use authorisation for its COVID-19 pill to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday. Paxlovid is an addition to oral treatments now available for COVID-19. Before Pfizer, another major US-based drugmaker, Merck, announced its own COVID-19 pill called molnupiravir last month. 

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Once the Pfizer pill receives approval from the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will chart the course for the distribution of the drug and its modality across the country. Both Paxlovid and molnupiravir have been tested so far on people at high-risk for coronavirus infection. 

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One of the concerns raised about Pfizer’s pill has been its affordability. A concern, Pfizer has sought to address through its declaration that it will try to provide the pills at low cost to developing countries. In the US however, these pills are expected to be expensive. 

In any case, the Pfizer and Merck pills could essentially mark a turning point in the COVID-19 pandemic for which no verified treatment currently remains available with the exception of vaccination. 

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Explaining the modality through which Pfizer’s Paxlovid works, Dr Daniel Griffin of the Columbia University Medical Centre said, the pill is a ‘protease inhibitor’. 

According to the doctor, who spoke to CNBC, when the coronavirus replicates itself within the human body, it uses an enzyme called protease. Protease works like scissors and chops the strands of viral protein into small pieces making them easier to spread. Paxlovid, Pfizer’s drug, serves to poison those protein enzymes that forces the virus to maintain a big, long protein that is not functional.