HONG KONG (Reuters) -China Meheco Group Co Ltd said on Wednesday it had signed an agreement with Pfizer to import and distribute the pharmaceutical firm’s oral COVID-19 treatment Paxlovid in mainland China.
The agreement is valid until Nov. 30, 2023, China Meheco said in a filing to the Shanghai stock exchange.
Paxlovid, which was approved by China in February, has been available through hospitals to treat high-risk patients in several provinces, Chinese media Yicai reported in March.
Three years into the pandemic, China began pivoting away from its signature “zero COVID” policy just this month, after historic protests against the economically-damaging curbs that had been championed by President Xi Jinping.
The sudden loosening of restrictions has sparked long queues outside fever clinics in a worrying sign that a wave of infections is building, even though official tallies of new COVID cases have trended lower recently as authorities eased back on testing.
Earlier in the week, a Chinese healthcare platform started selling Paxlovid in what appeared to be the first retail sale of the drug in the country.
The medication sold out just over half an hour after the listing was reported in the media, the platform’s customer service said, underscoring surging demand for COVID and flu medicines in China.
(Reporting by Meg Shen and Ella Cao, Additional reporting by Michael Erman in New York; Editing by Alison Williams and Mark Potter)
