SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea signed an agreement to buy additional courses of Pfizer Inc’s antiviral COVID-19 pill Paxlovid to cover 400,000 people, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said on Wednesday.
This brings South Korea’s total agreed purchases of oral treatments for COVID-19 to treatments from Pfizer for 762,000 people and treatments from Merck for 242,000 people, the KDCA said in a statement.
Pfizer’s Paxlovid is expected to be available in the country from mid-January as scheduled, KDCA said.
The South Korean government reinstated distancing curbs in mid-December as record-breaking daily tallies and serious cases strained the medical system.
(Reporting by Joyce Lee, Editing by Louise Heavens)
