One of Australia’s leading infectious disease experts has questioned the value of the $1.6 billion allocated to the fight against Covid-19 in Tuesday night’s federal budget, both for its medical use and its value for money. price.
Dr Nick Coatsworth said Molnupiravir, which is sold under the brand name Lagevrio and is one of two Covid drugs covered by the budget, “has a very dubious evidence base”.
He was Australia’s deputy chief medical officer during the height of the pandemic.
“There’s not much evidence that it works, even in elderly Australians at risk,” Dr Coatsworth told Daily Mail Australia.
He said he didn’t mind Molnupiravir being funded, “but the government needs to fund a proper study to determine whether they are effective or not.”
An infectious disease expert has questioned the value of the $1.6 billion allocated to the fight against Covid-19 in Tuesday night’s federal budget. Pictured is a woman receiving the Covid vaccine
“All the studies were done in unvaccinated people in 2020 and 2021, so we don’t have the evidence base,” he added.
‘The cost of a research study would be between 10 and 15 million dollars. So you have to pay between $10 and $15 million to determine if $1.3 billion was the right amount of money to spend.’
Dr. Coatsworth said the only major study on molnupiravir was one from the United Kingdom called Panoramic, which “showed that this drug didn’t really work in preventing hospitalizations.”
He said one of the reasons the government continues to invest a huge amount of money in Molnupiravir is that a study showed it may have had some effect on elderly residents in nursing homes.
“The second reason is that the most effective drug, Paxlovid, is more difficult to use because it has more interactions with the common medications that older people take,” Dr. Coatsworth explained.
“So although this drug molnupiravir is likely to do very little, GPs are much more comfortable using it because it is an easier drug to prescribe to people.”
Dr Nick Coatsworth (pictured) told Daily Mail Australia that Molnupiravir “has a very dubious evidence base”.
Dr Coatsworth also questioned why the government is paying so much money for Covid treatments.
‘But both Molnupiravir and Paxlovid still cost (the Government) $1,100 for a five-day treatment. This is quite expensive for an antibiotic,” he stated.
“You could understand that a pharmaceutical company could justify that if they published it in the middle of a pandemic, but we are no longer in the middle of the pandemic.”
“Why doesn’t the government negotiate a reasonable price for these drugs?”
He said if a patient had a bacterial infection and received a five-day treatment with a common antibiotic, it would cost the government about $5, but since it is Covid, it costs $1,100.
“Basically, what the government is saying is that we are going to continue spending exactly the same amount of money that we have spent in the past on these drugs, we are not going to find out if they work and we are not going to drive down the prices of the pharmaceutical companies “said Dr. Coatsworth.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted the federal Department of Health for comment.
A study in Melbourne found that “there may be some effect on elderly residents in nursing homes.” In the photo, an elderly woman receiving the Covid vaccine.