Pfizer Covid Pill Protects Against Severe Sickness, Death

Pat Stevens/

Pfizer’s says its Covid-19 antiviral pill cuts the risk of hospitalisation or death by up to 89 percent in high-risk patients, according to media reports.

The final trial results that confirm earlier data about the drug candidate, known as Paxlovid, also shows it cuts the risk of hospitalisation and death for standard-risk patients by 70 percent.

The drug works best if first given within three days of the onset of symptoms but is still 88 percent effective in high-risk patients within five days.

Pfizer also said its antiviral pill worked in laboratory studies against the Omicron variant, which is surging in South Africa and Europe and is expected to dominate US cases in the weeks ahead, according to New York Times.

“We are confident that, if authorised or approved, this potential treatment could be a critical tool to help quell the pandemic,” Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chief executive, said in a statement.

Last month, Pfizer asked the Food and Drug Administration to authorise the pill based on a preliminary batch of data. The new results will undoubtedly strengthen the company’s application, which could mean that Americans infected with the virus may have access to the pill within weeks.

The results, based on an analysis of 2,246 unvaccinated volunteers at high risk of severe disease, largely match the company’s initial, smaller analysis of the clinical trial, released last month.

Pfizer said that 0.7 percent of patients who received Paxlovid were hospitalised within 28 days of entering the trial, and none died. By contrast, 6.5 percent of patients who received a placebo were hospitalised or died.

Pfizer also released preliminary data from a separate trial looking at people with a lower risk. These volunteers including vaccinated people who carried a risk factor for severe disease, as well as unvaccinated patients with no risk factors.

In both trials, most of the volunteers were infected with the Delta variant.

But Pfizer said in today’s announcement that in laboratory experiments, Paxlovid also performed well against the highly mutated Omicron variant. The drug jams into one of Omicron’s key proteins — called a protease — just as effectively as it does with other variants, Pfizer found.

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