Pfizer’s New Oral COVID-19 Treatment Reduces Risk of Hospitalization or Death By 89%

Dec, 2021 - By SMI

Pfizer unveiled data of the first phase 2/3 clinical trial of its novel oral antivirus treatment for COVID-19 that has shown extraordinary efficiency by cutting down the risk of death or hospitalization.

Pfizer developed an antiviral pill to hinder the replication of SARS-CoV-2 and to prevent severe infection of the virus. According to the first phase 2/3 clinical trial data of the new treatment candidate revealed by the company, the antiviral pill decreased the risk of hospitalization and death in high-risk COVID-19 patients by 89% compared to placebo. As stated by Pfizer, data of the clinical trial will be submitted to the FDA for emergency use authorization.

Pfizer’s new antiviral candidate originally named as PF-07321332 and now called as PAXLOVID resulted from an old research to an antiviral drug to target the original SARS virus that occurred 20 years ago and the first data of the large-scale clinical trial indicates promising efficiency of this new antiviral pill. The trial studied unvaccinated participants at high risk of severe COVID-19 and administered them with a five-day course of the pill, in three days of symptoms appearance. It was observed that out of 389 subjects under administration of the antiviral pill, only three participants were hospitalized and there were zero deaths reported compared to placebo group, where 27 subjects out of 385 were hospitalized and seven deaths were reported.

Moreover, the trial also tested the treatment for five days following the onset of symptoms, which also showed promising results where rate of hospitalized participants was only 1% (6/607), without any deaths. While in placebo group, the rate of hospitalized patients were 6.7% (41/612) with 10 deaths. As reported by Pfizer, the new antiviral oral treatment showed strong antiviral in vitro activity against variants of coronavirus making it efficient therapeutic for treatment of different types of COVID-19 infections.