The pharmaceutical company Pfizer has just announced that its pill against COVID-19 is capable of reducing by almost 90% the risk of hospitalization and death of people belonging to some risk group if it is taken in the first five days after having symptoms . In addition, and according to the US company, the pill, trade name Paxlovid, would act effectively against the omicron variant, more specifically it would be a “powerful inhibitor”.
Paxlovid is still in the experimental phase and its use has not been approved to date in any country. The results presented are based on a study that Pfizer has carried out with about 2,250 unvaccinated people who have some risk factor associated with severe covid, such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity.
As reported by the company, the trial showed that the pill reduces hospitalization in high-risk adults with covid by 89% if taken within three days of the onset of symptoms, and drops to 88% if ingested in the first five days . Only 0.7% of the people who took the drug had to go through the hospital, compared to 6.5% of the admissions that were registered in the placebo group, who did not take it. In this last group there were 12 deaths in total and none among those who took the antiviral.
The side effects that have been detected while taking the pill have been mostly mild.
Pfizer also recently released the results of a second trial in 854 lower-risk people, both healthy unvaccinated people and people with a disease who are vaccinated. 2.4% of the participants who received a placebo had to be hospitalized, compared with 0.7% of those who took the antiviral. This means a 70% reduction in the risk of ending up in hospital due to severe covid.
What is Paxlovid?
Paxlovid is a mixture of nirmatrelvir, an experimental drug, and ritovanir, an antiviral used against HIV. The treatment would consist of taking 30 pills for five days. The first substance works by blocking the activity of an enzyme that the coronavirus uses to replicate. Ritovanir, meanwhile, would act to slow down the breakdown of nirmatrelvir in the body, increasing its effectiveness.
This drug does not work against rapidly mutating proteins found on the surface of the coronavirus. As such, they are expected to be more effective against newer variants than the antibodies used in most covid vaccines.
