Join on WhatsApp
Join on Telegram
Rabat – US pharmaceutical company Pfizer has said that its COVID treatment pill, Paxlovid, can cut the risk of hospitalisation and death by 89% in adults in the company’s clinical trials.
The new drug is intended for use soon after symptoms develop, particularly in people who are at high risk of severe disease.
The UK authorized a similar treatment called Molnupiravir by Merck Sharp and Dohme (MSD) yesterday, becoming the first country in the world to authorize such a treatment for COVID-19.
The UK has already ordered 250,000 courses of the Pfizer treatment, pending its approval, in addition to 480,000 courses of the Molnupiravir pill.
Sajid Javid, the UK’s Health and Social Care Secretary called Pfizer’s results “incredible,” and added that the UK’s own regulators would now proceed to assess its safety and effectiveness.
“If approved, this could be another significant weapon in our armoury to fight the virus alongside our vaccines and other treatments, including molnupiravir, which the UK was the first country in the world to approve this week,” Javid said.
Pfizer’s pill is designed to stop a certain enzyme that the virus needs to multiply, which makes it effective in curbing its spread within the body and transmission to other people.
The drug is to be taken in three pills twice a day, for a period of five days, in addition to ritonavir, another antiviral pill.
The treatment works differently from MSD’s, which instead puts errors in the virus’ genetic code.
Pfizer’s treatment remains experimental at this stage as the trials are still ongoing, but the company said it intends to submit the results to America regulators as part of a pending emergency use application for the drug.
Preliminary data from the trials shows that when given the treatment within five days of symptoms appearing, only 1% of the 1,219 high-risk patients were hospitalized, with none dying, compared to 6.7% of the placebo group who got hospitalized.
The company is also exploring the treatment’s impact on people with lower risks of COVID or those who have been exposed to the virus by someone else.
