In the two months after New Year’s Eve, when he attended a party in jeans that were too small for him, Zeng Jianjun has lost ten pounds.
The 35-year-old software developer, who works in Chengdu, a city in western China, is set to begin his third month of using semaglutide, a medication given to treat Type 2 diabetes, under the brand name Ozempic, which is owned by pharmaceutical behemoth Novo Nordisk. Under the brand name Wegovy, the pharmaceutical business (DK:NOVO.B) (NVO) (UK:0TDD) also offers a semaglutide medication for weight loss.
“I don’t have diabetes, but I buy Ozempic because it’s cheaper and is delivered faster [than Wegovy],” he stated to MarketWatch.
Zeng claimed that his Ozempic arrives within an hour and there is no delivery charge when he uses the Meituan delivery app on his phone. He is paired with an online physician through the app, who requests his name, age, health status, and history of drug usage.
Like in the U.S. and Europe, it is officially a prescription drug in China. However, Zeng only needs to respond to a few questions and pay the charge using Tencent’s (HK:700) (UK:0Z4S) or Alibaba’s (HK:9988) (BABA) Alipay. WeChat Pay.
A messenger on a motorbike delivers it in a tiny cooler with ice packets inside. “It arrives cold, and I put it in the refrigerator,” remarked Zeng.
In addition to ordering delivery of Ozempic to a Chinese address, MarketWatch was able to use videos to confirm Zeng’s claims. A one-month supply, administered once weekly at a dosage of 1 mg each injection, cost 798 yuan ($108).
Wegovy costs $1,349, whereas Ozempic costs about $997 for a month’s supply in the United States. The cost of the drugs is partially covered by certain health insurance plans in the US. For a month’s supply, the list price in much of Europe is less than $200.
Li Yuan, a resident of Shanghai, claimed that she uses the competing delivery app Ele.me to get the lower-dose 0.5mg Ozempic, which costs $460 yuan ($63). She claimed that throughout the previous four months, she had shed roughly seven kilograms, or fifteen pounds.
Younger people will be disproportionately affected by diabetes, which is expected to cost the Chinese healthcare system $337 billion by 2030, up from $190 billion in 2020.
Li is also a part of a WeChat group with 500 members that talks about diets, exercise routines, dosages, and costs.
She claimed she hasn’t needed to follow up after talking with her doctor about starting the medicine last year. She also said she keeps a careful eye on her weight and participates actively in the online group.
In a phone conversation, she stated, “The more involved I am [in the group], the more I tend to eat better and exercise,” which includes swimming and badminton.
Bernie Sanders, an independent in the U.S. Senate, questioned Novo Nordisk’s CEO about the company’s high prices in the United States during a hearing in September. “From a moral perspective, does it bother you knowing that keeping the price of Ozempic and Wegovy so high in the United States could lead to the preventable deaths of tens of thousands of Americans?” Sanders enquired.
The CEO of the Danish pharmaceutical business, Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen, responded, “We are very committed to making sure that Americans have access at an affordable price point for our medicines.”
When MarketWatch questioned Novo Nordisk about any such attempt to cut prices in the United States, the company did not reply.
According to the company’s 2024 annual financial report, Novo Nordisk holds an 80% market share in China for so-called GLP-1 agonists, which are the class of active component found in Ozempic and Wegovy.
According to government figures, the prevalence of diabetes in China, which has 1.408 billion people, has risen from less than 1% in 1980 to around 15% last year. Younger people are disproportionately affected by diabetes, which is expected to raise the financial burden on the Chinese healthcare system from $190 billion in 2020 to $337 billion in 2030.
Zeng of Chengdu stated that he is teaching his two young children to eat more vegetables and less rice, as well as to exercise more. He also noted that his children’s classmates’ waistlines are getting thicker.
“I am aware that when they reach my age, there will be medications that are even better [than Ozempic].” However, I would prefer that they not use medicines to manage their weight,” he stated.
“We were a slim nation once. We now resemble America more and more.
Tanner Brown is a MarketWatch and Barron’s reporter covering China.
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According to Li, the majority of the members of her WeChat group buy Ozempic and adhere to identical rules even if they do not have diabetes.
