Covid 19 Delta outbreak: Government signs advance purchase agreement for Covid-19 treatment pill

New Zealand has added another tool to the toolkit to fight Covid-19, being one of the first countries in the world to sign an advanced purchase agreement for a new Covid-19 treatment pill.

Molnupiravir is an oral antiviral treatment and early trials have shown that it significantly reduces hospitalizations and deaths from Covid-19.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the agreement guarantees an initial supply of 60,000 courses of molnupiravir.

She said it is important to have medicine to “help those who catch the virus avoid having to go to the hospital.”

Although Ardern continues to use a culling strategy, she said this purchase was not a guess.

“This purchase of 60,000 courses is based on the same population base as Australia and Singapore, and is not a guess on the level of Covid we may have in the future.”

Pharmac has negotiated an advance purchase agreement and New Zealand will receive molnupiravir once it has been reviewed and approved by Medsafe.

Drugmaker Merck and partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics said initial results showed that patients who received molnupiravir within five days of detecting symptoms of Covid had about half the hospitalization and death rate that those who received a dummy pill.

The study followed 775 adults with mild to moderate Covid-19 who were considered to be at high risk for serious illness due to health conditions such as obesity, diabetes or heart disease. The results were not reviewed by external experts, the usual procedure for monitoring new medical research.

Of the patients taking molnupiravir, 7.3% were either hospitalized or died within 30 days, compared with 14.1% of those receiving the dummy pill. After that period, there were no deaths among those who received the drug, compared to eight in the placebo group, according to Merck.

Molnupiravir will be able to treat people with mild to moderate Covid-19, but Ardern is still asking all New Zealanders to get vaccinated.

“This purchase ensures that we have molnupiravir to treat people with mild to moderate Covid-19, but I ask all New Zealanders to get vaccinated as the best protection against the virus so that we can resume our mode of life with as few restrictions as possible. ” she said.