Covid blocker
New pill taken at home can blunt the virus
THE first pill that could be taken at home to stop Covid symptoms developing has been shown to work.
An antiviral drug that prevents the disease worsening to the point where people need to be admitted to hospital could be crucial in preventing the NHS being overwhelmed this winter.
US pharmaceutical firm Merck has announced its pills – called molnupiravir – reduce the likelihood of hospitalisation or death by around 50% for at-risk patients.
A UK Government taskforce is understood to be in final talks about buying supplies of the drug, while regulators here look to give it emergency authorisation.
Merck’s chief science officer
Dr Daria Hazuda said: “It is the first oral antiviral to have shown efficacy in the outpatient setting for Covid.” She also told a UK media briefing that the results of a clinical trial are “game changing”. Interim analysis of 775 non-hospitalised Covid patients found 7.3% of those given molnupiravir
were hospitalised within 29 days of treatment – and none had died.
Eight of the placebo patients died. In total, 14% of those in the placebo group died or were hospitalised.
The clinical trial was stopped early after it was shown to work and it was deemed unethical to continue to deny participants in the placebo group access to the lifesaving drug. The pill is taken within five days of symptoms emerging, twice a day for five days.
Eddie Gray, who chairs the UK’s Antivirals Taskforce, set up to procure Covid treatments, called the results “exciting”.
He declined to say if Britain has purchased any of the pills but added: “I have chosen to turn up today to be here, read into that what you wish.”
Merck said it expects to make 10 million courses of the treatment within the next three months.
Professor Penny Ward, pharmaceutical physician at King’s College London, said: “It is greatly hoped the taskforce has pre-ordered courses of this medication so the UK can at last properly manage this condition... and relieve pressure on the NHS [this] winter.”
UK drug company Synairgen is developing a Covid antiviral inhaler.