Advancing our investigational oral antiviral COVID-19 medicine

In collaboration with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, we are advancing our research and development efforts for our investigational oral antiviral COVID-19 medicine. We believe we’re making a meaningful impact on the pandemic through our programs.

We are working with regulatory authorities around the world to make our oral antiviral treatment available globally. We are also continuing our research and development efforts to investigate broader uses of our oral antiviral medicine.

Our commitment to access

To accelerate broad global access , our comprehensive supply and access approach includes producing millions of courses of our investigational oral antiviral candidate through our global network, which includes manufacturing sites in nine countries across three continents.

Additionally, we have entered into advance purchase and supply agreements with the governments of several countries worldwide and are currently in discussions with additional governments. We have signed voluntary license agreements with multiple established Indian generic manufacturers and the Medicines Patent Pool to facilitate the availability of generic versions of our treatment option to more than 100 low- and middle-income countries. We’ve also allocated up to 3 million courses of therapy to UNICEF for low- and middle-income countries.

Through our licensing agreements with generics manufacturers and the Medicines Patent Pool, more than 3 million courses of generic therapy have been delivered to more than 15 low- and middle-income markets included in the licenses through March 2022.

Partnering to manufacture and supply Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines

We are proud to lend our expertise and capacity to support the manufacturing and supply of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine. We believe the vaccines developed by the research-based pharmaceutical industry are the most important first-line of defense for the prevention of COVID-19.

COVID-19 clinical trials

Our clinical development program includes several preclinical and early-phase studies, and two Phase 3 trials, one of which is currently evaluating our antiviral in the prevention setting:

• MOVe-AHEAD:  evaluating our oral antiviral candidate for post-exposure prophylaxis in adults who reside in the same household as someone with symptomatic, laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 who has not had those signs and symptoms for more than five days.

Learn more about our COVID-19 research and find a clinical trial .

Protecting our employees and their families

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have prioritized the health, safety and well-being of our employees and their families. Extensive steps have been taken to ensure that all of our work sites, including manufacturing plants and labs, are as safe as possible. We have supported COVID-19 vaccination, diagnosis and treatment, focused on physical, mental, social and financial well-being and provided resources to improve our working environment.

Giving back

We are committed to supporting our health care providers and our communities. Where possible, our employees around the world have been helping, including contributing volunteer services and donations to support both local and global responses. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we changed our volunteer policy to support employees with nursing and other medical backgrounds.

We recognize the need for additional health care professionals — including doctors, nurses and medical laboratory technicians — throughout a pandemic. That’s why in March 2020, we launched a program to enable our medically trained employees to volunteer their time to aid their communities while maintaining their base pay. Learn more about philanthropy at Merck , and check out our annual Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) report .