QuickStart’s key insights and recommendations to better respond to future global emergencies
Market access to COVID-19 oral therapeutics in low- and middle-income (LMIC) countries was delayed. It took nearly fifteen months from the US FDA emergency use listing for nirmatrelvir/ritonavir to be delivered to the first LMIC countries by global buyers, long after the major COVID-19 waves had passed. Vaccines played a major role in managing the pandemic; next time the first line of defense may be therapeutics, reinforcing the need to identify key insights and develop recommendations that will hasten the process in future global emergencies. The QuickStart Consortium undertook a rapid policy analysis to understand global and national level factors that delayed market access to oral antivirals. The analysis established that significant but solvable challenges slowed down the time taken to get the oral antivirals to people when they needed…









