UPDATE 1-China's CSPC Pharma partners with Pfizer for oral COVID treatment

(Adds details in paragraph 2, context in paragraphs 3, 4 and background in paragraph 5)

June 29 (Reuters) - Chinese drug maker CSPC Pharmaceutical Group said on Thursday it signed a strategic partnership with Pfizer to launch a local brand of an oral COVID-19 treatment, in an attempt to improve the access for treatment in China.

The combination of Nirmatrelvir and Ritonavir sold under the brand name Paxlovid, an oral small molecule developed by pharmaceutical company Pfizer, is used to treat patients suffering from mild to moderate COVID-19 symptoms and who are at the risk of disease progression.

In December 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorised the use of Paxlovid, making it the first drug for COVID-19 that can be taken at home.

China, whose home-grown vaccines are seen as less effective than the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA shots, has been racing to develop vaccines using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology since early 2020.

Earlier this year, CSPC said China had approved its first domestically developed mRNA vaccine against COVID-19, a major achievement in a country that has declined to use Western COVID shots to support domestic research.

(Reporting by Archishma Iyer in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)