A daily weight loss tablet carrying the same drug as Ozempic could be approved for sale in Australia as early as Christmas, and it's tipped to cost less than the injections Australians currently pay up to $460 a month for. Sydney GP and Mosh medical director Dr Tushar Yadav told Seven's Sunrise on Monday that Novo Nordisk's Wegovy pill is "definitely on the way".
The tablet went on sale in UK pharmacies on 6 July at prices starting around the equivalent of a daily coffee, and it removes the one thing that stops many patients from touching the current drugs: the weekly needle.
Same semaglutide as Ozempic, 25mg once a day, and no needle
Semaglutide is the drug inside both Ozempic and Wegovy. It mimics a gut hormone called GLP-1 that slows digestion and tells the brain you're full, so people eat less and lose weight. Ozempic is the version approved for type 2 diabetes, Wegovy is the higher strength version approved for weight loss, and until now both have only come as a weekly injection. Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk makes all of them.
The new product packs semaglutide into a once daily 25mg tablet. Far less of the drug survives the stomach than gets in through a needle, so the oral dose runs roughly ten times higher than the 2.4mg weekly jab to deliver the same effect. The US Food and Drug Administration approved it on 22 December as the world's first GLP-1 pill for weight management, and it reached American pharmacies in January.
"The dose that they're using in the pill compared to the jab is very different. So the effect is going to be similar, if not even slightly better, than what we get in the actual injectable product," Dr Yadav said.
Dr Tushar Yadav tips approval by Christmas, and the TGA confirms it's assessing the application
"It's with the TGA at the moment," Dr Yadav told Sunrise. "Earliest, it's going to be here by Christmas this year. It could be as late as the start of next year, or maybe midway next year, but definitely it's on the way."
The regulator has confirmed the paperwork is in, a shift from December, when it said it was yet to receive an application.
“The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has accepted and commenced evaluation of an application to register the oral tablet formulation of Wegovy (semaglutide),” the TGA said in a statement to 7NEWS. “As with all prescription medicine applications, the TGA will assess the medicine's quality, safety and efficacy before making a regulatory decision.”
If the TGA says yes: private scripts within weeks, but the launch date is Novo Nordisk's call
Approval on its own wouldn't put the pill on shelves. TGA registration makes it legal for any GP to prescribe on a private script, and Novo Nordisk then decides the launch date and the Australian price. In the US that gap was about a fortnight, approved on 22 December and in pharmacies through January. The telehealth weight loss clinics that drove the injectable boom here would be expected to move first.
Without a PBS subsidy the tablet would be full price from day one. The UK experience also suggests the coffee money headline belongs to the low starter doses, with the full strength 25mg dose selling closer to £199 a month.
There's no cheap workaround waiting, either. The government banned pharmacies from compounding copycat semaglutide from 1 October 2024, so the approved products are the only legal route, and the last surge in demand ended in Ozempic shortages the TGA managed for more than two years. A wave of needle shy new patients would test Novo Nordisk's supply all over again.
$5.80 a day in the UK, up to $460 a month for the jab here
In Britain the pill is sold privately at £99 to £199 a month depending on the dose, which Sunrise put at about $5.80 a day at the entry level, roughly the price of a flat white. Dr Yadav expects Australian pricing to land "about 10 to 20%" below the injectable products.
That gap is real money for current patients. Injectable Wegovy costs about $269 to $460 a month on a private script in Australia because obesity treatment isn't subsidised on the PBS. One group is about to get relief: late last year the government's medicines advisory committee recommended listing injectable Wegovy on the PBS for adults with obesity and established heart disease, a listing expected to take effect around the middle of this year at $25 a script. The pill would arrive with no subsidy attached, at least at first.
One in three patients lost 20% of their body weight in the pill's key trial
In the 64 week OASIS 4 trial that won the pill its US approval, adults taking the tablet lost an average of 13.6% of their body weight, against 2.2% on placebo, and one in three lost 20% or more. Novo Nordisk says the result is in line with the injectable version.
The catch is discipline. The tablet has to be taken on an empty stomach with plain water, then nothing to eat for at least 30 minutes. The most common side effects are the same ones injectors already know: nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.
Dr Yadav said the biggest drawback of the current medications is the needle itself, and that the tablet removes it.
"If you take a pill, it's a lot easier, removes the needle phobia, so people are really going to jump on top of this," he said.
The demand signal from Britain backs him. 76% of UK pharmacies expect to start significant numbers of patients on the tablet, and Dr Yadav says the Australian reception "should be exactly the same, if not more". On the Bureau of Statistics' latest national measure, two in three Australian adults, 67%, are overweight or obese.
Spotlight put Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro up against alcohol and gambling addiction
The pill lands as researchers chase a bigger prize. Seven's Spotlight program aired an investigation this month into whether GLP-1 drugs, including Ozempic, Wegovy and Eli Lilly's rival injection Mounjaro, do more than switch off hunger, meeting Australians who say cravings for alcohol and gambling faded alongside their appetite. More than 500,000 Australians already use the drugs, the program reported.
The early science points the same way. In the first controlled trial of its kind, published in JAMA Psychiatry last year, US researchers gave low dose semaglutide to adults with alcohol use disorder and found it cut their cravings, how much they drank, and their heavy drinking days compared with placebo. The evidence on gambling is still anecdotal, and none of the drugs is approved to treat any addiction.
Whether Australians get the pill by Christmas now rests with the TGA. The application is in and the evaluation has started. Everything else, the price included, follows from the regulator's call.
