The only US drugmaker that makes a potential treatment for the coronavirus that was touted by President Donald Trump raised the price by almost 100 per cent in January, as the virus caused havoc across China. Try our newsletter on Sustainable Business Free four-week trial of the Moral Money newsletter Get the newsletter Rising Pharmaceuticals, a New Jersey based company, increased the price of chloroquine — an antimalarial, which is one of the drugs that is being tested against Covid-19 — on January 23, according to data from research firm Elsevier. The drug price rose 97.86 per cent to $7.66 per 250mg pill and $19.88 per 500mg pill. But Rising said the price rise was “coincidental” and it restored the old price once it realised that the drug might be in demand because of the outbreak. The reversal of the price lift has not yet shown through in the data. In an interview with the Financial Times, one executive said that the company had originally increased the price because it wanted to be able to invest in new manufacturing facilities to keep the drug on the market. “As soon as we saw the increase in demand and the potential that this was going to be utilised in the way some folks are projecting it to be, we rescinded that price increase to the same price it has been on the market for since 2015,” he said.
Third_Party_
Article URL : https://www.ft.com/content/b7a21a16-6a1f-11ea-800d-da70cff6e4d3