PFIZER: CORONAVIRUS TABLET CUTS SEVERE ILLNESS BY 89%
A trial of Pfizer Inc.’s experimental antiviral pill for COVID-19 was stopped early after the drug was shown to cut by 89 percent the chances of hospitalization or death for adults at risk of developing severe disease, the company said on Friday.
The results appear to surpass those seen with Merck’s pill molnupiravir, which was shown last month to halve the risk of dying or hospitalization for COVID-19 patients also at high risk of serious illness.
Full trial data is not yet available from either company.
Pfizer said it plans to submit interim trial results for its pill, which is given in combination with an older antiviral called ritonavir, to the US Food and Drug Administration as part of the emergency use application it opened in October.
The combination treatment, which will have the brand name Paxlovid, consists of three pills given twice daily.
The planned analysis of 1,219 patients in Pfizer’s study looked at hospitalizations or deaths among people diagnosed with mild to moderate COVID-19 with at least one risk factor for developing severe disease, such as obesity or older age.
No deaths
It found that 0.8 percent of those given Pfizer’s drug within three days of symptom onset were hospitalized and none had died by 28 days after treatment. That compared with a hospitalization rate of 7 percent for placebo patients. There were also seven deaths in the placebo group.
Rates were similar for patients treated within five days of symptoms—1 percent of the treatment group was hospitalized, compared with 6.7 percent for the placebo group, with 10 deaths.
The company did not give details of side effects of the treatment.
Pfizer’s drug, part of a class known as protease inhibitors, is designed to block an enzyme the coronavirus needs in order to multiply.