Pfizer wants to ask the US government for approval for the pill as soon as possible. The company does not report whether the drug will also be submitted to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in Amsterdam, which is responsible for admission to the European market.
Test subjects
The Covid pill was tested on about 800 people who had contracted the virus and belonged to a risk group. They started taking the pill within three days of the first symptoms. Half of the subjects got the real Covid pill. In the four weeks after that, three of them were hospitalized. No one died. In the control group, which received saline as a placebo, 27 people had to be hospitalized. Seven of them died as a result of the infection.
Another group of more than 1,200 subjects received a pill within five days of the first symptoms. Of the 607 people who received the real pill, six ended up in hospital, but none died. Of the 612 people in that placebo group, 41 had to be admitted, ten of whom died from the infection.
one more pill
Competitor Merck, which operates in Europe under the name MSD, previously reported that its Covid pill cuts the risk of admission or death approximately in half. That drug, molnupiravir, was approved yesterday in Great Britain. The European regulator, the EMA, is currently still considering that pill.
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It is mainly intended for people with a high risk of hospitalization or death. They will then be given a pill twice a day for five days. “If you administer the drug correctly, i.e. when the complaints have just started, it can reduce the chance of admission or death by half,” claims Merck.
The pill costs 600 euros. It is not known how expensive the Pfizer pill will be.
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