Information about the decision to fund remdesivir for COVID-19
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Dear [name and contact details withheld]
Thank you for your request dated 23 September 2021 under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) for information relating to our decision to fund remdesivir for the treatment of COVID-19. You requested:
All information on Pharmac's decision to fund Remdesivir for the treatment of COVID-19
Please find documents about the decision to fund remdesivir attached with this letter.
OIA request documents Remdesivir decision papers [PDF 1.7 MB]
Please note, there is no minute of the decision to approve the memo of September 2020 for the procurement of emergency stock of remdesivir for use in New Zealand as the decision was granted by electronic approval of the memo. The minute of the decision to approve the memo for the procurement of additional stock of remdesivir for use in New Zealand, dated September 2021, is included with the documents released.
Additionally, please note that we approach our assessment of requests for information under the OIA on the basis that once we release the information to you it becomes available to any other party in that exact form (whether by you distributing it to others or by virtue of us receiving the same request from a different third party).
We have redacted a small amount of information from, or withheld, documents where we consider this is necessary to:
protect the privacy of natural persons (section 9(2)(a))
protect information where the making available of the information would be likely to unreasonably prejudice the commercial position of the person who supplied or who is the subject of the information (section 9(2)(b)(ii))
protect information which is subject to an obligation of confidence or which any person has been or could be compelled to provide under the authority of any enactment, where the making available of the information would be likely to prejudice the supply of similar information, or information from the same source, and it is in the public interest that such information should continue to be supplied (section 9(2)(ba)(i))
We trust that this information answers your queries. We are making our information more freely available, so we now publish selected OIA responses (excluding personal details) on our website. Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about this.