The United Kingdom was the first country to decide that the new virus inhibitor molnupiravir may be sold and used. It is the first pill that corona patients can take at home themselves. Until now, other anti-COVID drugs had to be injected.
The pill is intended for adults with mild to moderate COVID-19, who are also at least one other risk, such as obesity or heart problems. It is recommended that patients start treatment promptly, in the first five days after the onset of symptoms.
Studies show that treatment with molnupiravir causes patients 50 percent are less likely to have to go to hospital or die. Originally it was an anti-flu drug. It acts on a protein that the coronavirus uses to replicate itself.
Virologist Johan Neyts of KU Leuven calls the British recognition an important step. “It is the first, but not the last, virus inhibitor that we can deploy in this pandemic.” Weakened people in residential care centers who become infected despite vaccination can be helped quickly.
Molnupiravir was developed by the American companies MSD (Merck, Sharp and Dohme) and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics. The British government has ordered 500,000 treatments of 40 pills each of the drug, which is sold under the brand name Lagevrio. The United States, Australia, Singapore and South Korea have also already placed orders. The US alone has 1.7 million at about 700 dollars per course.
Merck says it can produce 10 million treatments by the end of this year; most of these have already been ordered. But the company has also announced that other companies will be allowed to make the drug so that it will also be available and affordable to patients in poorer countries.
Other pharmaceutical companies, such as the American Pfizer and the Swiss Roche, are also working on similar virus-inhibiting pills against COVID-19.
Great Britain, no longer a member of the European Union, did not have to wait for European authorization for molnupiravir. The drug has not yet been approved by the European Union. According to virologist Johan Neyts, it is a matter of “weeks or months” before European recognition is forthcoming, “I hope sometime early 2022”.
It European Medicines Agency EMA is currently investigating eight anti-COVID19 drugs. “5 of these are already well advanced; 3 can be recognized by the end of the year and some even by the end of the month,” he said. Marco Cavaleri of the EMA. He added that the Agency can also provide scientific advice to countries that want to use the new drugs more quickly, because the infection rates are rising again so quickly. The FDA is also investigating molnupiravir.
Listen to the conversation with Johan Neyts via Radio 1 Select
Source: vrtnws.be and The world today
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