Chinese state-owned Meheco Group signed a deal in mid-March with Pfizer to be its mainland China partner for the commercialization of Paxlovid, an oral COVID-19 drug that obtained conditional approval from China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) earlier this year. In less than a week, the first batch, 20,000 doses of Paxlovid, cleared customs and was shipped to Omicron-hit regions in China. The company announced via its official WeChat account on March 20 that Paxlovid had arrived at its logistics center in Beijing the day before, and would be quickly delivered to regions hard-hit by the virus under a drug emergency deployment order. Around midnight March 16, the first batch, 21,200 doses of Paxlovid, arrived in Shanghai by air from Belgium. By March 18, this batch had completed customs clearance. NMPA granted conditional approval to Paxlovid on Feb. 11 during the Beijing Winter Olympics. A number of Omicron cases had …