Gates Foundation allocates money for COVID pills for poor countries

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said millions of courses of Merck & Co.’s promising pill for Covid-19 could begin to reach lower-income nations early next year as the charity kicks in as much as $120 million to widen global access to the therapy, Report informs referring to Bloomberg.

The funds will assist generic-drug manufacturers, some of which have indicated they could produce as many as 10 million treatments a month, Trevor Mundel, president of the global health division at the Gates Foundation, said in an interview. While regulatory hurdles and others challenges need to be resolved, those drugmakers could start making shipments in the first quarter, he said.

Manufacturers are uncertain of the level of demand for the therapy, who will pay for it and how much production to allocate, he said, “so we want to get them off the sidelines and actually into action.”

Merck itself has said it expects to produce 10 million courses by the end of the year, and substantially more should become available in 2022.

Some wealthy and middle-income nations like Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand have already followed the US and secured the treatment or started talks to obtain it.