We are fortunate enough that there is now an FDA-approved drug called Paxlovid, which does an incredible job of keeping COVID patients out of the hospital (or morgue). Yet NBCNews.com chose a sensationalist, scary headline about the drug as its lead health story of the day. Really lousy journalism.
direct acting antiviral drugs
We're almost two years into the pandemic and there have been more than enough ups and downs to last a lifetime. But now we have a potentially big "up," because the results just came in on Pfizer's COVID drug Paxlovid—and they are nothing short of amazing. Will we finally be free of the terror of this pandemic? Maybe.
Merck just announced that it granted a royalty-free license for its antiviral drug molnupiravir to Medicines Patent Pool, a United Nations-backed organization dedicated to providing crucial medicines to 105 poorer countries. Will this make a difference in the battle against COVID? I argue that it will.
Antiviral drug development for COVID-19 took a back seat to vaccines during the brief time – when we thought that ending the pandemic was simply a matter of getting enough needles in enough arms. But the virus had other ideas: variants. Now it's looking like we may need a drug to complement the vaccines. Three are in development. Here's a look at Pfizer's PF-07321332. It should work, but don't hold me to that.
Remdesivir, an antiviral drug with the potential to treat COVID, has been largely ignored since its "introduction" to the world at the beginning of COVID. It just didn't seem to work very well. But data from a Phase 3 trial by Gilead was a surprise. The drug, when given to COVID patients in a non-hospital setting, did a very good job of keeping them out of the hospital. Here's a summary of the clinical data.
A group at Sloan Kettering is proposing the use of certain types of chemotherapy drugs to treat SARS-CoV-2 infection. One cannot help thinking of the old adage about what everything looks like when you only have a hammer.