PFIZER ORAL COVID DRUG COULD BE READY NEXT YEAR

Pfizer chief executive officer (CEO) Albert Bourla said that an oral drug for treating Covid-19 could be ready next year and that the US pharma giant is also working on an injectable antiviral.

“Particular attention is on the oral vaccine because it provides several advantages,” Bourla said in an interview to CNBC on Tuesday. “One of them is that you don’t need to go to the hospital to get the treatment, which is the case with all the injectables so far. You could get it at home, and that could be a game-changer.”

Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla has announced that an oral drug for treating the coronavirus disease could be ready next year, adding that the company is working on two antivirals - an oral one and an injectable one.

“We are actually [working] on two [antivirals], one is injectable and the other one oral... Particularly the attention is on the oral [antiviral] for the world... because [it] provides several advantages. One of them is that you don’t need to go to the hospital to get the treatment, which is the case with all the injectables,” Bourla told CNBC, according to a Hill news report.

Bourla said that “if all goes well, and if we implement the same speed, and if regulators do the same, and they are, I hope that by the end of the year”, the oral drug could be ready.

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Another Az-linked death

A 54-year woman in Canada has died after receiving Astrazeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, the first fatality linked to the jab in the country. In France, Paris prosecutors are set to seek involuntary manslaughter charges of deaths linked to the AZ vaccine.