A World Health Organisation-led programme to ensure poorer countries get fair access to Covid-19 vaccines, tests and treatments aims to secure antiviral drugs for patients with mild symptoms for as little as $10 per course, a draft document seen by Reuters says.

Merck & Co's experimental pill molnupiravir is likely to be one of the drugs, and other drugs to treat mild patients are being developed.

The document, which outlines the goals of the Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator until September next year, says that the programme wants to deliver about one billion Covid-19 tests to poorer nations, and procure drugs to treat up to 120 million patients globally, out of about 200m new cases it estimates in the next 12 months.

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