Dr. Scott Gottlieb Says Feds to Blame for Merck Pill Delays into 2022: ‘This is the Government’

Former Food and Drug Administration chief Dr. Scott Gottlieb said Monday he faults the federal government for delays that were likely to prevent Merck’s Covid-19 pill from reaching the market until 2022.

Merck on Monday submitted an application to the FDA for an Emergency Use Authorization enabling distribution of its Covid-19 drug, molnupiravir, to treat patients who have the virus. However, Gottlieb said that regardless of his former agency’s decision, it was unlikely the pill would reach a wide swath of the market before 2022.

“The … lament is that we didn’t have more investment early on in trying to scale up the manufacturing of the drug, so we’re going to have a limited supply if this does come to the market before the end of the year,” Gottlieb said in an interview with CNBC’s Joe Kernen. “It’s hard for me to decouple what what impact the government issues here that you’re talking about had on this.”

He said the government made “missteps” in focusing too much on vaccines.

“There was a focus on the vaccines and there wasn’t enough focus on the therapeutics and trying to get the available manufacturing,” he said. “That’s where the government really could have played a role.”

“I think the government could have done much more with scaling up manufacturing, so we’d have excess capacity if one of these drugs was successful. That’s the problem,” he said.

Gottlieb, who presently sits on the board of Merck competitor Pfizer, noted that a course of therapy with the drug was expect to cost $700. “Right now, the government’s bought all of the available supply — 1.7 million doses,” he added. “It’s going to be allocated. It’s not going to be available.”

“This isn’t a whole lot of supply. That said, Merck’s going to have much more supply coming online in 2022.  They have 10 million doses overall between now and the end of the year. Some of that has been allocated overseas. … I know the U.S. government has an option on a little more than the 1.7 million I assume they’re going to exercise.”

“Once we get into 2022, Merck is ramping up supply,” he added. “Look, the company’s good at this. They’re going to be able to get a lot of manufacturing online. My lament is that manufacturing should have been sitting there hot, waiting for this, given the magnitude of the crisis we’re dealing with.”

“This is not a Merck problem,” said Dr. Gottlieb, “This is really the government.”

Watch above via CNBC.