Washington – An experimental pill to treat coronavirus (COVID-19) developed by the United States company Pfizer cuts the risk of hospitalisation or death by 89 per cent in vulnerable adults, clinical trial results suggest.
The drug – Paxlovid – is intended for use soon after symptoms develop in people at high risk of severe disease.
It comes a day after the United Kingdom medicines regulator approved a similar treatment from Merck Sharp and Dohme (MSD).
Pfizer says it stopped trials early as the initial results were so positive.
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.
The combination treatment works slightly differently to the Merck pill which introduces errors into the genetic code of the virus.
Pfizer said it plans to submit interim trial results for its pill to the US medicines 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”.
Trial results
Interim data from trials of the treatment in 1 219 high-risk patients who had recently been infected with COVID-19 found that 0.8 per cent of those given Paxlovid were hospitalised compared with seven per cent of patients who were given a placebo or dummy pill.
They were treated within three days of COVID-19 symptoms starting.
Seven patients given the placebo died compared to none in the group given the pill.
When treated within five days of symptoms appearing, one per cent given Paxlovid ended up in hospital and none died. This compared to 6.7 per cent of the placebo group being hospitalised and ten of them dying. (BBC)