Several Asian-Pacific countries on Thursday announced agreements to purchase Merck’s experimental oral antiviral treatment for COVID-19 even though the drug has yet to be approved by regulators.

This move from Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea comes less than a week after Merck announced its plan to seek emergency authorization for its drug, molnupiravir, which in trials appeared to reduce the risk of hospitalization or death by around 50% for patients with mild or moderate COVID-19.

According to Reuters, Thailand and Taiwan also reported interest in purchasing what could be the first oral antiviral drug for COVID-19.

Australia on Tuesday said that its government had made a deal to “purchase 300,000 courses of the promising oral COVID-19 treatment molnupiravir.”

“Vaccines and new treatments like this will boost our national plan to safely reopen Australia and keep Australia safely open,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a statement.

Malaysia announced on Twitter its deal to buy 150,000 treatments of Merck’s drug.

“Malaysia today signed a letter of undertaking with Merck to procure the molnupiravir anti-viral treatment for COVID-19. We will continue to add more treatment options as part of our arsenal to be a COVID-19 resilient nation. This complements our successful vaccination rollout,” Malaysia’s health minister Khairy Jamaluddin said in a Tweet.

Merck, a German pharmaceutical company, said its oral drug was taken by trial patients globally every 12 hours for five days and was effective against all COVID variants.

As for the trial results, 7.3% of patients treated with molnupiravir were hospitalized within 29 days compared to 14.1% of patients who received a placebo. None of the patients who received the drug died, versus eight deaths among patients who took the placebo.

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