‘Repurposing’ existing drugs to treat COVID-19 is vital to reducing mortality and controlling the pandemic. Researchers from the University of Liverpool estimated minimum costs of production.
Several promising drugs have been identified and are in various stages of clinical trials globally. If efficacy of these drugs is demonstrated, rapid, mass availability at an affordable cost would be essential to ensuring equity and access especially amongst low- and middle-income economies.
Minimum costs of production were estimated from the costs of active pharmaceutical ingredients using established methodology, which had good predictive accuracy for medicines for Hepatitis C and HIV amongst others.
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