* My column in BusinessWorld, March 17,2020.
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The bad news is that the Wuhan virus — a.k.a. severe
acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2 which causes coronavirus
disease 2019 or Covid-19 — continues to expand worldwide. The good news is that
humanity is a survivor of many deadly viruses in the past and modern and
innovator medicines and vaccines keep coming.
It is also not “racist” to call it the Wuhan virus
because for most viruses, they are named for the places where they first
appeared or were discovered. Below shows some major viruses that humanity has
overcome and their estimated case fatality rate or CFR (see Table 1).
Other known deadly viruses are rabies, dengue, and HIV,
with the latter having estimated to have killed 32 million people, mostly in
Africa.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
estimated that global fatality from ordinary flu is up to 646,000 deaths per
year, excluding pandemics. If we keep this in mind, fatalities of 5,000+ from
the Wuhan virus worldwide does not appear to be so alarming. Its CFR of up to
6% also pales in comparison to the CFR of viruses like SARS and Ebola.
But hysteria has prevailed worldwide. The Philippines has
policies like the Metro Manila quarantine, sometimes called “lockdown,” from
other provinces, a curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., sending fully armed police and
soldiers to man checkpoints. These policies have expanded the hysteria instead
of reducing or calming it.
For now there is no existing vaccine or medicine against
the Wuhan virus. Humanity has survived past evolving viruses via evolving
medicines and vaccines. Viruses are living microorganisms that mutate and
evolve through time as there are many potential carriers like pigs, chickens,
bats, and other wild animals. It is important that humanity should recognize
the importance of evolving medicines that need to be invented.
So President Rodrigo Duterte’s recent Executive Order
(EO) 104, issued last February, imposing drug price control via maximum
wholesale price (MWP) and maximum retail price (MRP) that targeted mostly
innovator, newly invented, and still patented drugs is unwise and
irresponsible.
The Cheaper and Quality Medicines Act of 2008 or RA 9502
and its implementing rules and regulations (IRR) specified only MRP, no mention
or reference to MWP, and yet the EO targeted MWP or penalizing the
manufacturers of innovator medicines. The average retailers’ assured margin is
about 40% for the 122 molecules covering 205 medical preparations.
I asked a friend who works for a drugstore chain in
Manila to give me the existing market prices of certain medicines and I
compared those with the MWP and MRP which are contained in EO 104. The result
is ugly: for some medicines that I chose, the retailers’ margin is high, up to
62%, but projected patients’ benefits are either low/zero, or even negative,
meaning the proposed MRP is even higher than existing retail prices (see Table
2).
Going back to the Wuhan virus or COVID-19 — we need
effective and safe medicines against this dreaded disease to reduce the
hysteria and save lives, and these medicines are done only by innovator pharma
and biotech companies and laboratories, not generic companies.
EO 104 has sent wrong signal to innovator firms, so if
some of them finally invent a good treatment vs COVID-19, they may hesitate to
bring it in the Philippines. This situation can be remedied if the Department
of Health and Office of the President silently pull out that EO, and tell
innovator firms that they will not be penalized here. They can help save lives
and calm the hysteria in the Philippines.
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