Pfizer pill 89% effective against severe COVID

Pfizer pill 89% effective against severe COVID

WASHINGTON: Pfizer said Friday that a clinical trial of its pill to treat COVID-19 had shown it is highly effective, hailing it is as a big step toward ending the pandemic. A simple pill to treat the coronavirus at home has been sought since the start of the global health crisis. So far all treatments have been either intravenous or vaccine shots.

Pfizer’s is the second anti-COVID pill after that of Merck, which is actually an influenza medicine rebranded to fight the coronavirus. Pfizer’s has been created specifically to fight COVID. The Pfizer drug called Paxlovid achieved an 89 percent reduction in risk of hospitalization or death among adult patients with COVID who are at high risk of progressing to severe illness, the US company said.

The results from the middle-to-late stage clinical trial were so strong that Pfizer will stop recruiting new people for the trial, it said. Pfizer will submit the data to the Food and Drug Administration as soon as possible as part of its “rolling submission” for Emergency Use Authorization. “Today’s news is a real game-changer in the global efforts to halt the devastation of this pandemic,” said Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.

“These data suggest that our oral antiviral