Australia will buy 300,000 courses of an experimental antiviral pill in anticipation of the drug regulator approving it as a coronavirus treatment early next year.
Molnupiravir could be taken by people with mild or moderate COVID-19 as a five-day course to treat the virus. The most recent data from clinical trials showed it halved the risk of hospitalisation or death.
Australia has placed an order for Merck’s experimental COVID-19 pill ahead of it receiving regulatory approval.Credit:AP
It doesn’t need to be refrigerated, meaning it can be used in the community rather than just at hospitals or medical facilities, and could be used as a targeted intervention in high-risk locations and rural areas.
While it won’t be considered for registration by the Therapeutic Goods Administration until later this year, the government has struck a supply deal with makers Merck Sharp & Dohme to deliver the medicine if it is approved.
Health Minister Greg Hunt said the clinical data coming from the trials was very good, and he had been in contact with Merck’s Australian chief executive over the end of last week and the weekend about the deal.
But he cautioned that vaccination remained the most important and safest way for Australians to protect themselves during the pandemic.
“Every Australian has to assume that at some point, they will be exposed to COVID,” he said.
“Vaccines and treatments work together. Vaccines can prevent you getting the disease or seriously reduce the risk or consequences of it; treatments don’t prevent you getting the disease, but they can seriously reduce the risk of COVID becoming a life-threatening or a disease which requires hospitalisation. So that’s the two different roles.”
Almost 80 per cent of Australia’s over-16 population has now had at least one jab and 56.9 per cent are fully vaccinated.
Mr Hunt announced on Monday Australia had increased supplies of another treatment, sotrovimab, with 15,000 doses of the “critical breakthrough medicine” arriving in the country in recent days.
Sotrovimab was given TGA approval in August. It is delivered in hospitals through an IV drip.
“It doesn’t prevent [COVID], but it reduces the impacts,” Mr Hunt said.
“And it won’t do it in every case, but in many cases, it will mean the difference between hospitalisation or no hospitalisation, ICU or no ICU, and in some cases, it will prevent the loss of life.”
Another treatment, remdesivir, has been available since mid-2020 to reduce the recovery time for people who have been hospitalised with severe COVID symptoms.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government had been closely watching developments in COVID-19 vaccines and treatments throughout the pandemic and wanted to have medicines like molnupiravir ready to go should they receive TGA approval.
The TGA is considering registration for another two COVID treatments, as well as molnupiravir.
Nick Coatsworth, an infectious diseases expert at ANU, said treatments were about helping anyone who caught COVID as the nation reopened, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated.
“But in the short term, we would look to use it in people who weren’t vaccinated who couldn’t access or weren’t eligible for sotrovimab. Then usage would likely expand to those vaccinated as well depending on supply,” he said.
GlaxoSmithKline’s Australian medical lead for COVID Therapeutics, Dr Krystal Evans, said the company expected increasing global demand for treatments as societies reopened. GSK is the maker of the sotrovimab.
“There will be an ongoing need for COVID therapeutics as Australia manages through the next stage,” she said.
“I think [it’s] really important for people who do have underlying health conditions to know that there are early treatment options available for them.
“If they were to contract COVID-19 and they were deemed to be at an increased risk, early treatment options are available.”
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2021-10-04 11:30:00Z
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