Pharmaceutical shares including Astrazeneca, Pfizer and new look at MERCK and others.

Pharmaceutical shares including Astrazeneca, Pfizer and new look at MERCK and others.
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In this special edition I'll be covering a brief overview of Pharma stocks and how they are performing and how they MAY perform.

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show slide of FORBES list of vaccine companies I used in the review I did back in June this year.

And today we will review from one website looking at MERCK and some potential results we can anticipate.

Let's get started

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AZN, Pfizer, MRK

webpage
Doctors are excited about the medicine, molnupiravir, because a regimen of pills, even one that involves taking several pills twice a day for five days, should be far easier to deliver to patients than current antiviral Covid-19 treatments, which must be given intravenously.

How many other anti-Covid pills will end up proving effective?
One of the reasons that the success of molnupiravir is such a big deal is that there were questions as to whether an antiviral pill could help Covid-19 patients if given early enough. This medicine certainly did, reducing hospitalizations by 50%; it also appeared to have an impact on whether patients survived. That makes it a game-changer. Its success also ups the odds that other medicines will prove effective, too.

Will molnupiravir be used only in unvaccinated patients?
Merck’s trial was conducted entirely in patients who had not been vaccinated. That made it much easier to show that the medicine can reduce hospitalization and death — because patients who have not previously been vaccinated are more likely to be hospitalized or die.
But does that mean that, in practice, the drug will only be used in unvaccinated patients, or will it be used in cases of breakthrough infections? It’s hard to say. Patients with breakthrough infections are at lower risk of hospitalization, which could change the risk-benefit calculus around the medicine.

So how big will the market be?
..., an analyst at SVB Leerink, forecast in a note to investors on Monday morning that molnupiravir sales will peak near $5 billion a year in 2022.
Built into this are a number of assumptions, among them that the first-mover advantage will mean that Merck and Ridgeback will be used more than the other pills in development and that vaccinated patients with breakthrough infections will be eligible to receive the drug, too.
(Another researcher), takes the other side, essentially saying it is too soon to put a number on molnupiravir sales, in part because data from competing firms are not available but also because other questions remain.

What will it cost and who will pay?
This is the bottom line.....
Most analysts are basing the cost of molnupiravir on the $1.2 billion the U.S. government spent to lock up 1.7 million courses of the medicine, which works out to $700 per five day course. But ........ the cost for a new pill to treat influenza developed by Roche is just $150 per course.
Let me repeat that...
The course of medicine locked up by the U.S. government works out to $700 per five day course. But ........ the cost for a new pill to treat influenza developed by Roche is just $150 per course.
That's quite a premium being estimated to be paid to the company.
Will the $700 price hold up?

Forbes website:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/moneyshow/2020/06/16/9-pharmaceutical-companies-racing-for-a-covid-19-vaccine/?sh=7548c83676ad

STAT website:
https://www.statnews.com/2021/10/04/what-we-know-and-dont-know-about-mercks-new-covid-19-pill/

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