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, the company said.
"Today's news is a real game-changer in the global efforts to halt the devastation of this pandemic," said Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. The main analysis of the data looked at numbers from 1,219 adults in North and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia.Several companies are working on so-called oral antivirals, which would mimic what the drug Tamiflu does for influenza and prevent the disease from progressing to severe.Britain on Thursday became the first country to approve an anti-Covid pill, as it greenlit the use of Merck's antiviral drug called molnupiravir to treat patients suffering from mild to moderate coronavirus.
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