South Korea starts to distribute stocks of remdesivir, plans to purchase more in August

In a statement on June 30, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said that it plans to resume talks for the purchase negotiations for the breakthrough drug remdesivir in August 2020. Doses of the drug were earlier donated to South Korea by the US firm Gilead Sciences Inc, however, the country did not reveal the count. Further, KCDC stressed that the limited doses would be preserved for the critical patients of COVID-19, or severe pneumonia, and those with extremely low SP02 in need of supplement oxygen as the nation started redistribution of doses.

While South Korea is the first country to reveal the drug purchase timeline, KCDC director Jeong Eun-kyeong said at a daily COVID-19 conference that the coronavirus patients with severe symptoms that developed in less than 10 days will be given the drug. Additionally, patients with critical respiratory distress will also be administered with remdesivir in the early stages of the disease. She added, that the drug has been proven to be effective in moderating the overall impact of the coronavirus by a domestic panel of experts. Earlier this month, South Korea’s Ministry for Food and Drug Safety approved the medicine's emergency use after it yielded positive results in COVID-19 patients in the formal clinical trials.

In a statement, South Korea’s Ministry for Food and Drug Safety said that remdesivir could relieve symptoms of coronavirus and help improve the patient’s condition faster. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine had found that critical hospitalized COVID-19 patients who received Gilead Sciences' antiviral drug showed “improved recovery time”. The research was based on data from 538 patients who were administered remdesivir in Adaptive Covid-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT), which was sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the US.   

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Priced the drug at $390 per vial

On June 29, Gilead revealed that it has priced the drug at $390 per vial in the United States and other developed countries. Further, the company agreed to dispatch the drug supply to the United States over the next three months. The pharma company, however, asked for some more weeks to make the anti-viral drug available to COVID-19 patients in the developing world, including in India, as per a report.

Further, in a statement, the company said that the pharmaceutical firms that were seeking to manufacture the drug domestically were all still working on furnishing safety and quality data. Although, the approval process for the introduction of the medicine was being fast-tracked. While the US pharma giant Gilead Sciences was given the marketing authorization for the drug, four companies, Hetero, Jubilant Life Sciences, Cipla, and Mylan NV were awaiting the DCGI approval for manufacturing and selling the drug in India.  

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