China approves Wegovy weight-loss drug produced by Danish pharmaceutical firm Novo Nordisk
- Novo Nordisk is targeting patients in a country estimated to hold the world’s highest number of overweight or obese people
Denmark-based Novo will communicate details on pricing and availability when it launches, the company said in a statement. The 100-year-old firm said in March it would initially target Chinese patients willing to pay out-of-pocket for the weekly injectable drug.
Raffles Hospital Beijing, a major medical institution in the Chinese capital, might place an order around September, but concrete timing is uncertain, Rose Niu Wei, a marketing manager at the private hospital, told Reuters.
Novo’s shares on Tuesday were up 1.5 per cent, having earlier touched record highs that valued the company at nearly US$490 billion.
The number of overweight adults in China, the world’s second most populous country, is projected to reach 540 million by 2030, 2.8 times higher than 2000 levels, a Chinese public health study showed in 2020. Numbers who are obese are seen jumping 7.5 times to 150 million.