COVID-19 Treatment: First Copies Of Remdesivir To Be Sold In Bangladesh

The first copies of the COVID-19 treatment remdesivir will soon be sold for about $71 per vial in the Bangladesh market. Beximco Pharmaceuticals has developed a generic version of the drug from the California biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences.

Drug regulators in the United States cleared remdesivir for emergency use in early May, thus paving the way for its use outside of American hospitals. According to Bloomberg, licenses of patented drugs for emergency use are waived in the least developed countries under the World Trade Organization provisions.

Beximco, based in Dhaka, will begin producing a generic and more affordable remdesivir this May. It is initially targeted for domestic use and will be known as bemsivir in the South Asian country.

"We’re also receiving queries from other countries,” Beximico Operating Officer Rabbur Reza said. “The drug will not be supplied through traditional distribution channels. If some governments need our drug, we’ll export it.”

While private hospitals in Bangladesh will have to pay for the generic remdesivir, Reza said Beximco will make the drug available for free at state hospitals. A COVID-19 patient will need five to 11 vials of the coronavirus treatment to recover or about $295 to $781 for a whole course of treatment.

Gilead also granted Ferozsons Laboratories in Pakistan, and Cipla and Mylan NV in India licenses to develop generic versions of remdesivir to be sold in 127 countries. Meanwhile, the company also donated 1.5 million vials in various hospitals across the U.S.

Remdesivir is an experimental antiviral drug that showed promising results in clinical trials in reducing the duration of a COVID-19 patient's hospitalization. The drug also modestly reduced the mortality rate of the patients.

“From what we know about its mechanism, it acts directly to block the replication mechanism of the virus," Dr. Hana Akselrod of George Washington University Hospital said. "So, it would stand to reason that you want to give it early, or during the phase of the disease when the virus is most active."