Anti-Covid pill seen as ‘huge advance’
>>BALTIMORE: An experimental antiviral pill could halve the chances of dying or being hospitalised for those most at risk of contracting severe Covid-19, according to data that experts hailed as a potential breakthrough in how the virus is treated.
If it gets authorisation, molnupiravir, which is designed to introduce errors into the genetic code of the virus, would be the first oral antiviral medication for Covid-19.
Merck and partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics said they plan to seek US emergency use authorisation for the pill as soon as possible and to make regulatory applications worldwide.
“An oral antiviral that can impact hospitalisation risk to such a degree would be game-changing,” said Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Current treatment options include Gilead Sciences’ infused antiviral remdesivir and the generic steroid dexamethasone, both of which are generally only given once a patient has already been hospitalised.
“This is going to change the dialogue around how to manage Covid19,” Merck Chief Executive Robert Davis said.
Existing treatments are “cumbersome and logistically challenging to administer. A simple oral pill would be the opposite of that,” Mr Adalja added.
The results from the Phase III trial, which sent Merck shares up more than 9%, were so strong that the study is being stopped early at the recommendation of outside monitors.
Shares of Atea Pharmaceuticals which is developing a similar Covid19 treatment, were up more than 21% on the news.
Shares of Covid-19 vaccine makers Moderna were off more than 10%, while Pfizer was down less than 1%.
Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said investors believe “people will be less afraid of Covid and less inclined to get vaccines if there is a simple pill that can treat Covid”.
Pfizer and Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG are also racing to develop an easy-to-administer antiviral pill for Covid-19. For now, only antibody cocktails that have to be given intravenously are approved for non-hospitalised patients.
White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said on Friday that molnupiravir is “a potential additional tool ... to protect people from the worst outcomes of Covid,” but added
that vaccination “remains far and away, our best tool against Covid-19”.
A planned interim analysis of 775 patients in Merck’s study looked at hospitalisations or deaths among people at risk for severe disease.
It found that 7.3% of those given molnupiravir twice a day for five days were hospitalised and none had died by 29 days after treatment.
That compared with a hospitalisation rate of 14.1% for placebo patients. There were also eight deaths in the placebo group.
“Antiviral treatments that can be taken at home to keep people with Covid-19 out of the hospital are critically
needed,” Wendy Holman, Ridgeback’s CEO said.
Scientists welcomed the potential new treatment to help prevent serious illness from the virus, which has killed almost 5 million people around the world, 700,000 of them in the United States.
“A safe, affordable, and effective oral antiviral would be a huge advance in the fight against Covid,” said Peter Horby, a professor of emerging infectious diseases at the University of Oxford.
The study enrolled patients with laboratory-confirmed mild-to-moderate Covid-19, who had symptoms for no more than five days.