Pfizer Inc. said yesterday that its Covid-19 pill reduced hospitalizations and deaths in high-risk patients by 89 per cent, a result that has the potential to upend how the disease caused by the coronavirus is treated, and alter the course of the pandemic.
The pharmaceutical company said in a statement that it was no longer taking new patients in a clinical trial of the treatment “due to the overwhelming efficacy” and planned to submit the findings to United States (U.S) regulatory authorities for emergency authorization as soon as possible.
The results mean there are now two promising pills for treating Covid-19 patients early in the course of the disease. Last month, Merck & Co. and partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP submitted their experimental pill to regulators after a study showed it slashed the risk of getting seriously ill or dying by half, in patients with mild-to-moderate Covid-19.
A pill that could be taken at home at the first sign of symptoms is a crucial tool for taming the Covid-19 crisis globally, so long as it’s widely available. A Pfizer spokesperson said submissions to other regulatory agencies will occur shortly after the U.S. filing.
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In Pfizer’s trial of 1,219 unvaccinated adults, five days of treatment with its drug dramatically reduced the rate of hospitalization when it was started within either three days or five days of symptom onset, the company said. The drug, Paxlovid, binds to an enzyme called a protease to stop the virus from replicating itself. Some drugs for HIV work in a similar way.
Overall, just 0.8% of people who started treatment within three days of getting sick ended up in the hospital and no one died, while 7% of people who got a placebo in that window were later hospitalized or died. Similar results were found when the drug was started within five days of symptom onset. The result, which hasn’t been published in a medical journal, was highly statistically significant, Pfizer said.
“We are really over the moon that we did see such high efficacy in this study. It has tremendous implications for patients globally,” said Annaliesa