Coronavirus (Covid-19)
US buys up most of the world’s supply of Covid-19 drug
The US has purchased almost the entire global supply of one of the main drugs used to treat Covid-19 patients. Reports say that American officials have bought up all the Remdesivir available in July and 90% of the supply company’s stock in August and September as well.
Remdesivir, which was originally developed to treat Ebola, is produced almost exclusively by the US pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences and has been priced at $2,340 (about 70,000 baht) per patient in richer nations for a typical five-day treatment course, including 5 vials.
The company has agreed to ship almost all of its drug supplies to the United States over the next three months.
Dr Andrew Hill, a senior visiting research fellow at Liverpool University, told Sky News that this means that Remdesivir will not be available for use in patients in the UK and Europe until October.
Dr Hill always says…
“This deal that has been struck by America means that people with Covid-19 in the UK can’t get access to these treatments that would get them out of the hospital quickly and could improve their chances of survival.”
“So far, we know that there will be no supplies of Remdesivir for the next three months as America will take drugs and we won’t have access to them. This is the case in the United Kingdom and in Europe.”
“Low and middle-income countries may produce generic versions of the drug, but are unable to sell it to Europe because Gilead has a patent for it.”
SOURCE: Sky News
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Johannes Jansen
Wednesday, July 1, 2020 at 4:30 pm
then it become’s time that europa going to boycot USA, the Englisch government can forbid the sale of it but Mr. Johnson and Trump have the sam corruption methods, The people in England had stand up for there rights cq Health, if it not work the easy way then the hard way.
Upson Downes
Wednesday, July 1, 2020 at 4:59 pm
Remdesivir was developed to treat Hepatitis C. It is NOT effective against Ebola. But that doesn’t change the fact that the US has cornered the market on it, for all the good it will do them. I suppose it beats wearing a face mask.
David
Wednesday, July 1, 2020 at 7:23 pm
Remdesivir has been found time and again to be a colossal failure. And yet it continuously gets media airplay as being some sort of antidote to the current hysteria over covid-19. Thailand has been able to steer through the stormy waters of this mess without resorting to this disastrous drug which even when it was used for ebola it wasnt all that great.
Denis
Thursday, July 2, 2020 at 8:31 am
In France, many professional suspect that GILEAD product is not efficient.
At the “Institut Hospitalo-universitaire Méditerranée”, Professor Didier Raoult (One of the top 5 epidemiologist) and his teams prescribed for patients who tested positive and (very important) at the start of the infection:
-a treatment with the combination of hydroxychloroquine (200 mg x 3 per day for 10 days) + Azithromycin (500 mg on the 1st day then 250 mg per day for 5 more days), as part of the precautions for use of this association (including an electrocardiogram on D0 and D2), and outside of marketing authorization. In cases of severe pneumonia, a broad-spectrum antibiotic is also used.
The results of this very low cost treatment seems to be very efficient. Results has been published.
Unfortunately, French government officials preferred GILEAD treatment and many people passed away.