Paxlovid prices are rising on the Chinese black market amid the COVID-19 outbreak

January 12, 2023 admin 0 Comments

Since December 2022, when China’s non-coronavirus policy was overshadowed by COVID-19, Chinese Americans have been fiercely debating how to ship medicine to China. A devastating wave of hundreds of millions of COVID-19 infections has left pharmacy shelves bare. In a repeat of the 2020 Wuhan outbreak, when Chinese Americans shipped personal protective equipment to their families in China, expats are trying to make up for critical shortages of drugs like ibuprofen and paracetamol.

One of the most controversial items is Paxlovid, a drug made by US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer that can prevent viruses from multiplying inside the body’s cells. Paxlovid can only be obtained with a prescription, and Report Airfinity shows that doctors have only prescribed the drug in about 13 percent of COVID-19 cases in the United States, mostly to patients over 65 or those with underlying health conditions.

Chinese social media is full of discussions on Paxlovid. Some Chinese Americans are trying to get supplies of medicine from people who haven’t taken the medicine despite receiving a prescription, while others are using virtual healthcare platforms, like PlushCare, eMed, Truepill, and Push Health. This requires submitting a false positive test result, filling out online forms, and going through a short online counseling session. It is not cheap. In a WeChat group with local Chinese students, I found an individual selling an unopened box of Paxlovid for about $500: Biden administration Pay about $530 per course of Paxlovid, but patients can get it for free.

Some accounts on Red Book, a Chinese social media platform known for practical advice, claim to be able to get Paxlovid, citing me a price of 8,000 yuan ($1,181) per box. People adopted creative methods to avoid drug confiscation by customs, such as sewing pills into the pockets of jackets in the mail or gluing them to the pages of notebooks. A Chinese graduate student living in Texas admitted he got a packet of Paxlovid via a friend who had COVID-19, then put the pills in a vitamin bottle and mailed them to family in China.

Paxlovid was not well known in China prior to the December 2020 outbreak, and when it was covered it was often treated with suspicion. In February 2022, Paxlovid received emergency conditional approval from the China National Medical Products Administration. When Shanghai faced the wave of COVID-19 last March, 21,200 boxes Paxlovid arrived in Shanghai on the evening of March 17th. The drug was later distributed to Jilin, Guangdong, Hubei, Hunan, Henan and other provinces. At that time, the price of baxlovid was 2,300 yuan (340 US dollars) for a course. Many netizens were against the use of baxlovid, both in terms of foreigners and because of its price.

One Article He stated that Paxlovid was competing against traditional Chinese medicine (TCM, a government-promoted pseudoscience) like Lianhua Qingwen, attacked Paxlovid’s efficiency, and called the drug’s proponents “capital comprador”. Columnist who uses the pseudonym Yaodao Mingyue and writes for several national websites attacked Not only Paxlovid but also an outstanding Chinese scientist Chang Wenhongwho believed that China should “live with the virus”.

Since a new wave of infections began to flood the country in early December 2022, Paxlovid has become in great demand. On the afternoon of December 13th, he was Paxlovid included On 1Yao.com, China’s leading online pharmacy, at 2,980 yuan ($440) a box, it sold out within two hours.

He told the drug sales representative, who spoke on condition of anonymity Foreign Policy that even Pfizer employees in China could not obtain Paxlovid and that manufacturing restrictions meant supply was severely limited, shipped directly to regional distributors and later to hospitals. The salesperson also said the hospitals most likely to have supplies of Paxlovid are United Family Hospitals, an expensive private hospital chain that caters mostly to international residents and high-net-worth individuals. When I called Beijing United Family Hospital, the receptionist said that the medicine was only available after a personal visit and a doctor’s prescription and that the demand was much higher than the supply, which means there is no guarantee that it will be available.

After lagging behind on antivirals for months, except for limited imports into Shanghai, the Chinese authorities are trying as best they can to scramble in the midst of the crisis. On December 25, 2022, Beijing issued an “Urgent Notice on Organizing Antiviral Drug Application Training for Medical Personnel of City Community Health Service Institutions.” Subsequently, community hospitals in Beijing began receiving limited amounts of paxlofide; a Report It shows that community health service centers in Dongcheng and Chaoyang counties received one or two dozen boxes – still far short of demand.

On January 3, the Shanghai government announce Paxlovid will gradually become available in 115 hospitals and 113 community health centers. Some Online discussions She notes that to avoid reselling the drug on the black market, patients who received Paxlovid were asked to take the pills in the hospital.

A resident of Shijiazhuang confirmed with Foreign Policy Major county hospitals may have a limited supply of Paxlovid, and it can be prescribed if a person has the right contacts. For example, it was sent by a friend of the resident with special connections to pick him up from the hospital, with special approval signed by the head of the hospital.

On the evening of January 8, when the medical insurance negotiations ended, the National Health Insurance Bureau immediately stated that China would not include Paxlovid in the list of drugs covered by the basic medical insurance plan, blaming the high prices offered by Pfizer. However, the plan will include TMC Qingfei Paidu granules in this list despite the lack of data on their effectiveness in treating COVID-19. when Caixin Posting this news on his Weibo account, most of the much-liked comments blame the government for wasting money on buying ineffective medicines. The most liked comment said, “(Government) spent a lot of money doing COVID-19 testing and building quarantine centers,” implying that China wasted money on Zero-Covid but not prepared for the outbreak.

Some people in China turn to the black market. A Shenzhen resident began researching Paxlovid in mid-December 2022, mostly because her father-in-law had a severe heart condition and was in poor health. I contacted dozens of people on WeChat, and some of them claimed to know the pharmacy owners in Hong Kong. Others said they bought boxes of Paxlovid in the US and Canada and were waiting for packages to arrive; They claimed to have contacts in Chinese customs as well. The cheapest bid I received was 10,000 [yuan] Box. It was mid-December, when not many people were asking about Paxlovid. She hesitated and tried to bargain but later regretted being slow after prices jumped to between 14,000 and 20,000 yuan and then, at peak demand in January, between 40,000 and 50,000 yuan. At the moment, the price is said to be around 16,000 yuan ($2,363), and scams are common.

Like many others, the Shenzhen resident decided to buy the generic Indian-made COVID-19 drug called Primovir. This drug has not been approved by the National Medical Products Administration, which means that it is illegal to sell it in China. “But we don’t care much about that,” she said. After extensive research, she bought Primovir for around 3,000 yuan ($443), a common price on the black market. When her father-in-law was ill in the intensive care unit, she brought him to the hospital. However, the doctors decided against using it, given the condition of his liver and kidneys.

Baxlovid deficiency is one example of increasing inequality in health resources in China. Data shows that Beijing’s medical and health resources are far superior to other regions. In Beijing, it was the number of health workers per 1,000 people 12.61 in 2020, much higher than other cities. During this new wave of COVID-19, not only has Beijing obtained more supplies of Paxlovid, but the government has also sent healthcare workers From Shandong, Jiangsu, Hunan, to Beijing – although these regions are also seeing massive waves of COVID-19 infections.

Many rural Chinese may not have heard of Paxlovid. The 598 million Chinese living in rural areas are served by health centers in townships that have poorer equipment and drug supplies compared to urban hospitals plus untrained and sometimes older staff.

In a town near Shangqiu, for example, 30,000 people Share one health center. When COVID-19 cases reached their peak, more than 300 people flocked to the health center each day, but the health center only had five boxes of ibuprofen; several boxes of Ganmao Qingre pellets, a TCM product; And one box of cephalosporin antibiotic injections. Stockpiling drugs to treat COVID-19 was suggested by health care workers before this wave, but it seemed impractical: With severe funding shortfalls, the health center still owed money to pharmaceutical companies.

a study Posted in frontiers in medicine Expect the latest wave of infections to pass through major cities in China such as Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Guangzhou by the end of 2022. The Chinese government is also announce That Beijing was the first city to pass the peak of the epidemic, and claims that production and life are gradually returning to normal. But as the Lunar New Year approaches on January 22, millions of people who live in cities travel back to their hometowns in rural areas. The first wave may have passed in the cities, but in a drained and poorly supplied countryside, the worst may be yet to come.

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