Gilead to charge $2,340 for coronavirus treatment drug

The maker of a drug shown to shorten recovery time for severely ill COVID-19 patients says it will charge $2,340 for a typical treatment course for people covered by government health programs in the United States and other developed countries.

Gilead Sciences announces the price Monday for remdesivir, and said the price would be $3,120 for patients with private insurance. The amount that patients pay out of pocket depends on insurance, income and other factors.

“We’re in uncharted territory with pricing a new medicine, a novel medicine, in a pandemic,” Gilead’s chief executive, Dan O’Day, tells The Associated Press.

“We believe that we had to really deviate from the normal circumstances” and price the drug to ensure wide access rather than based solely on value to patients, he says.

However, the price is swiftly criticized; a consumer group calls it “an outrage” because of the amount taxpayers invested toward the drug’s development.

The treatment courses that the company has donated to the US and other countries will run out in about a week, and the prices will apply to the drug after that, O’Day says.

In 127 poor or middle-income countries, Gilead is allowing generic makers to supply the drug; two countries are doing that for around $600 per treatment course.

Peter Maybarduk, a lawyer at the consumer group Public Citizen, calls the price “an outrage.”

“Remdesivir should be in the public domain” because the drug received at least $70 million in public funding toward its development, he says.

— AP