They look effective in clinical trials.īoth antiviral pills look promising when it comes to fighting COVID. Here’s what else you should know about these new treatments for COVID.
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The antiviral medications will be available by prescription at your local pharmacy, and “everybody knows how to swallow a pill,” he said. “So I think that’s why these oral antivirals are getting a lot of attention.” Tim Sheahan, a virologist at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health who did preclinical work on both molnupiravir and remdesivir. “They were not things that were widely available to the general public,” said Dr. However, they have to be given via intravenous infusion or injection by a healthcare worker, usually in a hospital.
Others - like the currently available monoclonal antibody treatments and the antiviral drug remdesivir (sold as Veklury) - are effective under specific circumstances. Some that initially looked promising, or at least got a lot of attention, have turned out to be failures (see ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine). Since the start of the pandemic, experts have been desperately searching for effective treatments for COVID. More than 3 billion people around the world have now been safely vaccinated, while oral antivirals continue to be studied. Vaccines are a highly safe and effective way for children 5 and older and adults, including people who are pregnant, to avoid infections in the first place. However, experts agree that these medications should not take the place of vaccination. These pills could help protect against hospitalization and death due to the respiratory virus, if the real-world results are as good as the clinical trials (they aren’t always). Pfizer has also submitted a request to the FDA for emergency use authorization for its own antiviral pill, marketed under the brand name Paxlovid, which may become available in the near future.Ĭlinical trials for the two medications purport to show a 30% to 89% reduction in the risk of being hospitalized or dying due to COVID if taken soon after symptoms start. “Should an alternative oral agent become available that had a better safety profile and equal to or better efficacy profile, the agency might reconsider its authorization,” he said. Green, who voted for emergency use authorization, said he might consider using the drug in unvaccinated COVID patients with multiple risk factors. Michael Green, a professor of pediatrics, surgery, and clinical and translational science at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “This was clearly a very difficult decision,” said Dr. The panel recommended it for non-pregnant adults with mild-to-moderate COVID symptoms who are at high risk of hospitalization or death. If the FDA follows the advice of its panel, which it usually does, it means doctors may be able to prescribe the drug. The panel’s narrow vote of approval reflected their concern about molnupiravir's relatively modest benefit and potential safety issues.īased on animal studies, molnupiravir isn’t recommended for people who are pregnant because there is a potential risk of fetal malformations, particularly of the bones and cartilage. (A second antiviral pill, Paxlovid, will go before the FDA for evaluation soon.)
30, an FDA advisory panel voted 13–10 to give Merck an emergency use authorization for a COVID pill called molnupiravir. Now, finally, a new oral medication for COVID-19 may be inching closer to emergency use authorization, although experts say it has shortcomings. One major goal has been to have an effective COVID treatment that’s as easy as taking a pill.
Even though there’s now a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine for people 5 and older, treatments are still desperately needed for the millions of people who continue to get sick.