President Joe Biden’s administration is likely to announce the purchase of about 10 million courses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 antiviral pill, according to The Washington Post.
Although the experimental pill, which the pharmaceutical company plans to sell under the brand name Paxlovid, has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, Pfizer announced earlier this month that taking the pill within three days of the onset of symptoms led to an 89% reduction in the risk of hospitalization and death in people who are at a high-risk of COVID-19 infection.
The company has filed for emergency-use authorization and has already begun manufacturing the pill, and currently has enough to treat somewhere between 100,000 to 200,000 people before the end of the year.
"We are moving as quickly as possible in our effort to get this potential treatment into the hands of patients, and we look forward to working with the U.S. FDA on its review of our application, along with other regulatory agencies around the world," Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said on Tuesday, in a statement.
The White House declined to comment to the Post when asked.
Bourla previously told CNBC that the company will submit its data on the pill to the FDA before Thanksgiving.
"I think this medicine will change the way things are happening right now that will save millions and millions of lives; it has the potential to do it," Bourla said on CNBC’s "Squawk Box" during an interview, adding that Pfizer has "the capacity right now of 500 million pills," or about 50 million treatments.
"The very high efficacy comes even to us as a surprise ... exceeds our most visionary expectations we had for that," he said.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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