THURSDAY, July 2, 2020 (HealthDay News) — The United States’ deal with Gilead Sciences to scoop up nearly all of the world’s supply of the only drug licensed to treat COVID-19<\/a> has outraged health experts.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services said it secured 500,000 treatments of the antiviral drug remdesivir through September, representing 100% of Gilead’s July production capacity and 90% of its capacity in August and September, the Associated Press<\/i> reported.<\/p>\n This type of selfish behavior sets a dangerous precedent for attempts to share scarce treatments during the pandemic, health experts warned.<\/p>\n “It so clearly signals an unwillingness to cooperate with other countries and the chilling effect this has on international agreements about intellectual property rights,” Ohid Yaqub, a senior lecturer at the University of Sussex in the U.K., said in a statement, the AP<\/i> reported.<\/p>\n “I have never seen anything like that. That a company chooses to sell their stock to only one country. It’s very strange and quite inappropriate,” Thomas Senderovitz, head of the Danish Medicines Agency, told Danish broadcaster DR<\/i>.<\/p>\n A “a stronger framework” is needed to ensure fair prices and access to key medicines for people and nations worldwide, Dr. Peter Horby, who is conducting a large clinical trial testing several treatments for COVID-19<\/a>, told the BBC<\/i>, the AP<\/i> reported.<\/p>\n He suggested that since it’s an American company, Gilead was likely under “certain political pressures locally.”<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n![\"MedicalNews\"](\"https:\/\/images.medicinenet.com\/images\/HealthDay\/healthday.png\")
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