<Anchor> The



government announced that it will soon close a contract to secure more than 300,000 people's supply of Pfizer's edible coronavirus treatment. When the contract is completed, 540,000 people will be secured, including those from other pharmaceutical companies, and we aim to introduce it in Korea at the end of next month.



Reporter Kim Deok-hyun reports.



<Reporter>



Until last month, Pfizer's edible drug 'Paxrovid' for which the government had confirmed the supply amount and schedule was for 70,000 people.



The government is currently negotiating to increase the total supply to 162,000 people, but as the domestic epidemic situation worsened, the target was further increased.



[Kim Bu-gyeom/Prime Minister: We have been negotiating with Pfizer to purchase more than 300,000 medicines, which is much more than the 70,000 supply we have already revealed. Now that contract is in the final stages... .] If the



242,000 servings of MSD's Lagevrio, which have completed the pre-purchase contract, are added, the domestic supply will increase to 540,000.



The government has announced that it will advance the introduction of the treatment as much as possible by the end of January next year.



It is judged that the domestic quarantine situation can be stabilized once the treatment is distributed in earnest.



The government plans to actively prescribe oral medications from the home treatment stage.



Oral treatment is a drug that reduces the amount of virus in the body of a confirmed patient, so it is effective when the amount of virus is high in mild conditions.



Since the initial production of foreign pharmaceutical companies is small, each country is competing for a contract in advance.



The United States secured 13 million doses of Pax Lovid and Lagevrio combined, and Japan also signed an additional contract for 2 million Pax Lovid, increasing the amount of pre-purchase for the treatment to 3.6 million.



We also need to predict the expected size of the target group for edible drugs and proactively purchase them in advance.



(Video coverage: Jeong Seong-hwa, video editing: Lee Seung-yeol)