Covid-19 pill: Pfizer says newly developed antiviral pill stops hospitalization and death by 89%

Pfizer has reported that an experimental medication they developed to treat Covid reduces the risk of hospitalization or death in vulnerable persons by 89 percent.

Paxlovid is a medicine that should be taken as soon as symptoms appear in those who are at high risk of developing severe disease.

Pfizer claims that because the initial results were so promising, it decided to end the trials early.

The good news came just one day after the UK drugs regulator authorized a Merck Sharp and Dohme therapy (MSD).

The UK has already ordered 250,000 courses of the new Pfizer treatment along with another 480,000 courses of MSD’s molnupiravir pill.

The Pfizer drug, known as a protease inhibitor, is designed to block an enzyme the virus needs in order to multiply. When taken alongside a low dose of another antiviral pill called ritonavir, it stays in the body for longer.Three pills are taken twice a day for five days.

Unlike the Pfizer drug, the Merck pill introduces errors into the genetic code of the virus.Pfizer said it plans to submit interim trial results for its pill to US drug regulator, the FDA, as part of the emergency use application it started last month.

The company’s chairman and chief executive officer Albert Bourla said the pill had “the potential to save patients’ lives, reduce the severity of Covid-19 infections, and eliminate up to nine out of 10 hospitalisations”.

 Interim data from trials of the treatment in 1,219 high-risk patients who had recently been infected with Covid found that 0.8% of those given Paxlovid were hospitalised compared with 7% of patients who were given a placebo or dummy pill.

Those given the pill were treated within three days of Covid symptoms starting.Seven patients given the placebo died compared to no one dying among the group given the pill.

When treated within five days of symptoms appearing, 1% given Paxlovid ended up in hospital and none died. This compared to 6.7% of the placebo group being hospitalised and 10 of them dying.Patients in the trial, were elderly or had an underlying health condition which put them at higher risk of serious illness from Covid.

They all had mild to moderate symptoms of coronavirus.