COVID Breakthrough: New Pfizer Antiviral Pill

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Pfizer develops COVID therapeutic antiviral pill that cuts hospitalizations and deaths by 89%

Pfizer Inc. said its COVID-19 therapeutic antiviral pill, officially known as PF-07321332, reduced hospitalizations and deaths in high-risk patients exposed to the virus by 89%, a result that has the potential to upend how the disease caused by the coronavirus is treated and possibly end the course of the pandemic.

The drugmaker said that it was no longer taking new patients in a clinical trial of the treatment “due to the overwhelming efficacy” and planned to submit the findings to U.S. regulatory authorities for emergency authorization as soon as possible.

The Pfizer results mean there are now two promising candidates for treating COVID-19 patients early in the course of the disease. Last month, Merck & Co. and partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP submitted their experimental pill to regulators after a study showed it slashed the risk of getting seriously ill or dying by half in patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19.

A pill that could be taken at home at the first sign of symptoms is a crucial tool for reducing and possibly ending the COVID-19 crisis globally, so long as it’s widely available.

In Pfizer’s trial of 1,219 unvaccinated adults, five days of treatment with its drug dramatically reduced the rate of hospitalisation when it was started within either three days or five days of symptom onset, the company said. The drug, Paxlovid, binds to an enzyme called a protease to stop the virus from replicating itself.

Overall, just 0.8% of people who started treatment within three days of getting sick ended up in the hospital and no one died, while 7% of people who got a placebo in that window were later hospitalised or died. Similar results were found when the drug was started within five days of symptom onset. The result, which hasn’t been published in a medical journal, was highly statistically significant, Pfizer said.

References:

  1. https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/pfizer-develops-covid-pill-that-cuts-hospitalisations-and-deaths-by-89-121110500783_1.html
  2. https://newsnationusa.com/news/world/uk/covid-breakthrough-as-pfizers-new-pill-slashes-hospitalisations-by-89/
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