Opinion: Generics: a missing piece in China’s Covid-19 crisis response

China’s massive Covid-19 crisis, sparked in part by the country’s rolling back its strict zero-Covid policies in early December, has seen millions of people infected with SARS-CoV-2. Making the problem worse is that supplies of name-brand Covid-19 drugs are few and far between, and generics of these drugs won’t be available in China due to failed manufacturer negotiations.

The surge in travel for the recent Lunar New Year celebration, which had been discouraged by the government since the pandemic emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, could maintain the peak of the infection for another few weeks. A top Chinese epidemiologist has estimated that about 80% of people in China, a country of 1.4 billion people, have been infected with the virus.

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