SHANGHAI, June 25 Reuters Novo Nordisk39;s hugely popular weightloss drug Wegovy has been approved in China, it said on Tuesday, the world39;s secondlargest economy and the country estimated to hold the highest number of overweight or obese people.

The company will communicate details on pricing and availability when it launches, it told Reuters in a statement. Novo said in March it would initially target Chinese patients willing to pay outofpocket for the weekly injectable drug.

Raffles Hospital Beijing, a major hospital in the Chinese capital, might place an order around September, but concrete timing is uncertain, Rose Niu Wei, a marketing manager at the private hospital, told Reuters.

By 1000 GMT on Tuesday Novo39;s shares were up 1.5, having earlier touched record highs that valued the company at nearly 490 billion.

The number of overweight adults in China, the world39;s second most populous country, is projected to reach 540 million by 2030, 2.8 times higher than 2000 levels, a Chinese public health study showed in 2020. Numbers who are obese are seen jumping 7.5 times to 150 million.

But Novo may have a much shorter time in the Chinese market to make the most of its earlymover advantage in weightloss drugs.

Its patent on semaglutide, the key ingredient in Wegovy and its diabetes drug Ozempic, is set to expire in less than two years in China compared to in 2031 in Europe and Japan and in 2032 in the U.S, and local drugmakers are racing to develop generic or…