INTERNATIONAL: The international public health group Medicines Patent Pool has welcomed on Tuesday Pfizer's decision to allow generic manufacturers to supply its experimental antiviral COVID-19 pill to 95 low- and middle-income countries.

Pfizer and the MPP’s voluntary licensing will allow the United Nations-backed group to grant sub-licenses to qualified generic drug manufacturers to make their own versions of PF-07321332. Pfizer will sell the pills it manufactures under the brand name Paxlovid.

Pfizer, which also makes one of the mostly widely used COVID-19 vaccines, has said the pill cut the chance of hospitalization or death for adults at risk of severe disease by 89 percent in its clinical trial. The drug will be used in combination with ritonavir, an HIV drug that is already available generically.

Pfizer's licensing deal follows a similar arrangement by rival Merck & Co for generic manufacturing of its COVID-19 treatment. The deals are unusual arrangements that acknowledge the dire need for effective treatments as well as the pressure drugmakers are under to make their life-saving drugs accessible at very low costs.

The Executive Director of the Medicines Patent Pool, Charles Gore has announced that they are extremely please to have another weapon to protect people from the ravages of Covid-19. Gore hopes the generic version of Pfizer's drug will be available within months.

The 95 countries in the license agreement cover around 53 percent of the world's population and include all low- and lower-middle-income countries and some upper-middle-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. They also include countries that have transitioned from lower-middle to upper-middle-income status in the past five years. Pfizer will waive royalties on sales in low-income countries. It will also waive them in the other countries covered by the agreement as long as COVID-19 remains classified as a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization. The company has said it expects to manufacture 180,000 treatment courses by the end of next month and at least 50 million courses by the end of 2022.

^{PHOTO: EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE MEDICINES PATENT POOL, CHARLES GORE, SAYING PFIZER WILL ALLOW GENERIC VERSIONS OF ITS COVID-19 PILL IN 95 COUNTRIES / FILE OF PFIZER'S COVID-19 VACCINE IN PRODUCTION, PFIZER HEADQUARTERS IN NEW YORK, VIDEO GRAPHIC OF SARS-COV-2, NURSES WORKING IN COVID-19 TREATMENT CENTRE IN SENEGAL AND PEOPLE QUEUING TO BE TESTED FOR COVID-19 IN DRC}