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While stocks of Paxrovid, an edible corona treatment drug, are running low, there was a case where 70 people were almost lost a few days ago.
Reporter Park Jae-hyun covered the reason why Pax Lovid is so lacking.
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The day that 70 Paxrovid was delivered to a pharmacy in Gyeonggi-do was on the 16th.
But the medicine did not come that day.
The medicine went to Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, about 140km away.
Only after receiving a complaint from the pharmacy, the delivery company found a box of 70 people at the Cheongju shipping center and delivered the medicine yesterday (the 22nd).
It took six days to find the missing drug.
What's worse than poor management is that inventories are rapidly declining.
[Jung Eun-kyung / Director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Yesterday): The stock holds 76,000 people.
With the current trend, it can be used for about two weeks, but the amount of prescription is increasing…
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The amount of food that the government has contracted to introduce is equivalent to 1,400,000 people.
In a phone call with SBS, a government official said, "At the end of last year, at the time of the contract, we saw the peak of the epidemic at around 30,000 people a day," and "It was difficult to predict the rapid spread of Omicron."
Within the government, there was an opinion that the introduction of edible medicines should be drastically increased as there were more than 10 times the number of confirmed cases at the time.
However, considering the production volume of Pax Lovid and the competition to secure it among countries, it is not easy to bring in additional quantities, even in an early date.
This is the reason why they hastened to introduce another edible treatment 'Laguebrio' without approval for domestic use.
Lagevrio is ready for domestic delivery, and the first batch is expected to arrive on the 25th.
The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety will announce whether or not to approve Laguebrio as early as today.