As Jo Wang, an event planner in Beijing, watched members of her family fall ill with COVID-19 one by one toward the end of the previous month, she had a single goal: locate antiviral drugs that would protect her grandfather, who is elderly, when it was his turn to become ill.
She was unlucky for the first three days, since she was unable to acquire a box of Pfizer’s Paxlovid on an e-commerce platform. However, on the fourth day, she was fortunate enough to obtain the COVID therapy through an official channel, and she received it in the mail on the sixth day. But Wang, who was breaching the rules by obtaining the medication proactively – before her grandfather went ill – was also tormented by guilt. This was because Wang had sought the prescription before her grandfather fell ill.
“At that moment, I was having a terrible time… It is absolutely unknown to you how many days it will take to purchase this medication, thus you have no way of estimating this. “And you don’t know how long the people in your family can hold on,” she said, emphasizing her fear that if she waited until the 92-year-old fell ill, it would be too late to get the pills, which are the most effective when taken early on in the course of the illness. The pills are most effective when taken early on in the course of the illness. “We are in a really precarious situation right now.”
As a tsunami of COVID-19 overwhelms China, driving increased demand for treatment, Wang is not the only person seeking to get Western pharmaceuticals. This is especially true for the country’s enormous senior population, which is disproportionately undervaccinated.
In recent weeks, an increasing number of people have turned to the black market to purchase COVID treatments. On the black market, vendors claim to sell treatments ranging from illegal imports of Indian-made generics of Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Merck’s molnupiravir to the genuine product at prices that are up to nearly eight times higher than the market price.
The revelation made on Sunday that the government had been unable to strike an agreement with Pfizer to cover Paxlovid under its national insurance plan added fuel to the fire of rising discontent caused by the shortages. Officials stated that the price that Pfizer wanted for was unreasonable. This decision could mean that after March 31, 2019, the medication will only be available to individuals who can afford to pay the full price for a course of treatment, which is currently estimated to be roughly 1,900 yuan (or $280).
When administered shortly after the onset of symptoms, paxlovid has been found to lower the risk of death as well as the need for hospitalization in individuals who are at high risk. In February of this year, the medicine, which is very popular in industrialized nations, was approved in China as the first oral pill designed exclusively for the treatment of COVID.
During the most recent round of talks, China did indicate that it would be willing to fund two additional treatments that are used for COVID-19: the traditional Chinese medicinal Qingfei Paidu and the indigenous antiviral tablet Azvudine. There is a lack of information regarding the efficacy of Azvudine in preventing severe illness.
The pricing pitfall and shortages, which have occurred nearly a year after the pill was first authorized and several months after Pfizer tapped a domestic drugmaker for local production, show the challenges that China is currently facing as its government attempts to deal with the demand for treatments among its population of 1.4 billion people after abruptly dropping its Covid controls last month.