By Maggie Fick
LONDON (Reuters) -Novo Nordisk said on Monday it has launched its popular obesity drug Wegovy in China, the world’s second-largest pharmaceuticals market where it estimates more than 180 million people live with obesity.
The move intensifies the competition with Eli Lilly, which secured approval for its weight-loss drug in China in July but has yet to launch it.
Both companies are ramping up production efforts to capitalise on a weight-loss market projected by analysts to exceed $150 billion by the beginning of the next decade.
A spokesperson for the Danish drugmaker confirmed the news to Reuters after it was first reported by China-based financial media outlet Yicai. The price for a month’s supply of the starter dose of Wegovy will be 1,400 yuan ($193.27), Yicai reported. The list price of Wegovy in the U.S. is about $1,349 for a month’s supply.
The Novo spokesperson did not comment on the price.
Novo Nordisk gained approval for Wegovy in China in June, and will initially target Chinese patients willing to pay out-of-pocket for the weekly injectable drug.
Novo launched Wegovy in the U.S. in 2021. Strong sales there and in the 15 other countries where Wegovy has since launched, have propelled Novo’s shares to record highs. The company has a market capitalisation of about $449 billion.
Wegovy will not be reimbursed by China’s national healthcare insurance, which provides basic coverage for most of the country’s 1.4 billion people. Novo is looking for ways to make the medicine more affordable, such as through commercial insurance, an executive was quoted as saying in the Yicai report.
The company is launching a “digital patient service platform” for patients taking the medicine, it said on its WeChat account.
(Reporting by Maggie Fick, editing by Stine Jacobsen, Jason Neely, Susan Fenton and Tomasz Janowski)
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