A trial of an experimental Pfizer antiviral pill to fight Covid-19 was stopped early after the drug was shown to reduce the likelihood of hospitalization or death for adults at risk of developing the disease by 89%. severe, the company announced on Friday.
The results appear to exceed those hit by molnupiravir, a drug from MSD drugmaker (known as Merck in the United States and Canada), which, according to tests released last month, halve the likelihood of death or hospitalization from Covid-19 for patients high risk.
Complete data on the tests conducted by both companies is not yet available.
Shares in Pfizer were up 13% to $49.47 and MSD was down 6% to $84.69.
Pfizer announced it plans to submit interim test results for the pill, used in combination with an existing antiviral called ritonavir, to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the US food and drug enforcement agency, as part of an application. of emergency use that she submitted in October.
The combination treatment, which will be sold under the brand name Paxlovid, consists of three pills given in two daily doses.
The planned analysis of 1,219 patients participating in the Pfizer study considers hospitalizations or deaths among people who received Covid-19 diagnoses as mild to moderate but with at least one risk factor for developing a severe version of the disease, such as obesity or advanced age.
The study found that 0.8% of people who received the Pfizer drug within three days of experiencing symptoms were hospitalized, and none died within 28 days of treatment. This compares to a 7% hospitalization rate for patients who received placebos. In the placebo-treated group, there were also seven deaths.
The percentages were similar among patients who received treatment five days after experiencing symptoms—1% of the group who received the drug were hospitalized, compared to 6.7% of those who received the placebo, among whom there were also 10 deaths.
Antivirals need to be applied as soon as possible, before an infection sets in, so that they can be most effective. MSD tested its drug on patients who had had symptoms five days earlier.
“We determined that the drug was highly effective, even if applied five days after the patient started being treated… people can wait a day or two before being tested, and that means we have time to treat them and actually offering a benefit, from a public health perspective,” Annaliesa Anderson, who runs the Pfizer program, told Reuters.
The company did not detail the side effects of the treatment, but said about 20% of patients treated with the drug and placebo experienced adverse effects.
“The data suggest that our oral antiviral drug candidate, if approved by regulatory authorities, has the potential to save patients’ lives, reduce the severity of Covid-19 infections and eliminate up to 90% of hospitalizations,” said Albert Bourla, president -Pfizer executive, in a statement,
The company announced that it expected to produce more than 180,000 doses of the drug by the end of 2021, and at least 50 million doses by the end of 2022, 21 million of which in the first half.
“We are expanding our production capacity and speeding up work, and we will update these numbers in the coming weeks,” the company said.
Infectious disease experts emphasize that preventing Covid-19 through widespread use of vaccines remains the best way to control the pandemic, but only 58% of Americans have received both doses of the vaccine, and access to it in many parts of the planet is limited.
Pfizer’s drug, part of a category known as protease inhibitors, was created to block an enzyme the coronavirus needs in order to multiply.
Molnupiravir from MSD has a different mechanism of action, designed to introduce errors into the virus’ genetic code. MSD has already sold millions of doses of this treatment, which was approved this week by regulatory authorities in Britain, the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries.
The UK announced earlier this month that it had reserved 250,000 doses of Pfizer’s antiviral.
The company is also studying whether the pill can be used by people who do not have risk factors for serious Covid-19, as well as to prevent coronavirus infection in people exposed to the virus.
Translated by Paulo Migliacci.
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