A World Health Organization-led programme to ensure poorer countries get fair access to COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments aims to secure antiviral drugs for patients with mild symptoms for as little as $10 per course, a draft document seen by Reuters says.

Merck & Co's  experimental pill molnupiravir is likely to be one of the drugs, and other drugs to treat mild patients are being developed.

The document, which outlines the goals of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) until September next year, says that the programme wants to deliver about 1 billion COVID-19 tests to poorer nations, and procure drugs to treat up to 120 million patients globally, out of about 200 million new cases it estimates in the next 12 months.

The plans highlight how the WHO wants to shore up supplies of drugs and tests at a relatively low price after losing the vaccine race to wealthy nations which scooped up a huge share of the world's supplies, leaving the world's poorest countries with few shots.

There is precedent for lower prices of critical medicines for low-income countries during the pandemic.

AstraZeneca has pledged to sell its COVID-19 vaccines at cost of around $4 per dose during the pandemic and Pfizer  is charging the U.S. government at cost - around $7 a dose - for 1 billion doses for the country's donations to the ACT-A's vaccine programme called COVAX.

Still its COVID-19 vaccine will be a big revenue driver for the U.S. drugmaker - it charged wealthy countries around $20 for billions of doses in initial supply deals and will make an expected $33 billion in revenue from the shot this year.

A spokesperson for the ACT-A said the document, dated Oct. 13, was still a draft under consultation and declined to comment on its content before it is finalised. The document will also be sent to global leaders ahead of a G20 summit in Rome at the end of this month.

The ACT-A asks the G20 and other donors for additional funding of $22.8 billion until September 2022 which will be needed to buy and distribute vaccines, drugs and tests to poorer nations and narrow the huge gaps in supply between wealthy and less advanced countries. Donors have so far pledged $18.5 billion to the programme.

The financial requests are based on detailed estimates about the price of drugs, treatments and tests, which will account for the programme's biggest expenses alongside the cost of distributing vaccines.

Although it does not explicitly cite molnupiravir, the ACT-A document expects to pay $10 dollar per course for "novel oral antivirals for mild/moderate patients".

Other pills to treat mild patients are being developed, but molnupiravir is the only one which has so far showed positive results in late-stage trials. The ACT-A is in talks with Merck & Co and generics producers to buy the drug. read more

The price is very low if compared with the $700 per course that the United States has agreed to pay for 1.7 million courses of the treatment.

But Merck has said it is committed to providing timely access to its drug globally with plans for tiered pricing according to a country’s ability to pay. It also has licensing deals with eight Indian generic drugmakers. read more

A study carried out by Harvard university estimated that molnupiravir could cost about $20 dollars if produced by generic drugmakers, with the price potentially going down to $7.7 under an optimised production.