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Pfizer Strikes Deal to Allow Other Companies to Make Its COVID Treatment Pill

The agreement will grant manufacturers a sublicense to make the treatment for patients in 95 other countries.

Pfizer has agreed to allow other companies to produce its experimental COVID-19 treatment, a move that could make the pill available to people in poor countries. The company announced the deal in a statement Tuesday, saying it will give a license to the United Nations-backed nonprofit Medicines Patent Pool that will allow manufacturers worldwide to produce the pill for use in 95 countries. “It’s quite significant that we will be able to provide access to a drug that appears to be effective and has just been developed, to more than 4 billion people,” Esteban Burrone, the head of policy at the Medicines Patent Pool, was quoted saying of the agreement. The agreement excludes several countries that have suffered major outbreaks, including Brazil, Libya, and Jamaica, which will have to purchase the treatment from Pfizer directly. The company has said its pill, which has yet to be approved by health regulators, reduces the risk of hospitalization and death in patients with mild or moderate cases of the virus by almost 90 percent.