HHS announces move to commercial distribution for Merck’s antiviral Lagevrio

The US De­part­ment of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices an­nounced that Mer­ck’s Covid-19 an­tivi­ral Lagevrio will be tran­si­tioned from gov­ern­ment-man­aged dis­tri­b­u­tion to com­mer­cial dis­tri­b­u­tion this No­vem­ber.

The gov­ern­ment said it would “wind down” its dis­tri­b­u­tion be­gin­ning Oct. 2, fill­ing or­ders of the oral an­tivi­ral to a re­quest-based sys­tem. Then in ear­ly or mid-No­vem­ber, or­der­ing from the gov­ern­ment al­to­geth­er will be halt­ed. The drug has been avail­able un­der emer­gency use au­tho­riza­tion in the US since De­cem­ber 2021, but has not won full ap­proval.

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