soon a pill that would halve hospitalizations?

The American laboratory Merck plans to apply shortly to the drug agency in the United States for the green light for the marketing of a pill which, according to a clinical trial, reduces by two the risks of hospitalization and death of patients with the disease. of Covid-19. If authorized, this oral drug would be the first product of this type to be marketed to treat Covid-19, which, after vaccines, would represent a major step forward in the fight against the pandemic .

Positive clinical trials

The results of the clinical trial are positive, assures the group, also called MSD outside the United States. It was carried out on 775 people with mild to moderate cases of Covid-19 and at least one aggravating risk factor. They received the treatment within five days of the first symptoms.

The rate of hospitalization or death in patients who received the drug was 7.3%, compared with 14.1% in those who received placebo. No deaths were observed in people treated with the drug, against 8 in the second group. Several experts stressed the importance of seeing all the clinical data and insisted on the fact that this type of treatment should be taken in addition to the vaccine.

“Huge progress in the fight against Covid”

But for Peter Horby, professor specializing in emerging infectious diseases at the University of Oxford, “a safe, affordable and effective oral antiviral would be a huge step forward in the fight against Covid”. “Molnupiravir looked promising in the lab, but the real test was to see if it had any benefit in patients. Many drugs fail at this point, so these interim results are very encouraging,” he said in a report. message quoted by the British organization Science Media Center.

Antivirals work by preventing the virus from replicating itself. Their application can be twofold: both to allow people already suffering from the disease not to suffer from serious symptoms, but also to those who have been in close contact not to develop it. This type of treatment with tablets, easy to administer, is eagerly awaited and seen as an effective way to fight the pandemic. But in general, antiviral drugs have so far not been very convincing against Covid.

Other laboratories are also doing it

As the market is potentially huge, several laboratories have entered the niche, such as the biotech Atea Pharmaceuticals and the Roche laboratory, which are studying the effectiveness of a comparable treatment, called AT-527. Pfizer announced on Monday that it had started a large-scale clinical trial for its own anti-Covid pill, to test its ability to preventively reduce the risk of infection in those around a person who has contracted the disease.

With the virus continuing to circulate and the majority of available solutions requiring a visit to a health facility, “antiviral treatments that can be taken at home to keep people infected with Covid-19 out of hospital are absolutely necessary “said Wendy Holman, an executive at Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.

“Not a miracle drug”

The problem with antivirals like Merck’s is that they have to be taken before patients are generally considered “sick enough to need anything other than treatment for symptoms,” notes Peter English, former director of the Public Health Committee of the Association of British Physicians. Antivirals against the flu or cold sores, for example, are only effective if they are taken very early, he reminds the Science Media Center.

“This is not a miracle drug, but a tool to support vaccination,” advance on Twitter Peter Hotez, professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, who is also worried about the possible appearance of ‘some resistance to the drug if it is widely used. Merck, by anticipation, has in any case already started large-scale production of molnupiravir and plans to manufacture the doses needed for 10 million treatments by the end of the year.