New Covid-19 Pill Shows Success in Initial Testing

Written by: Anshika S.

Cover Design by: Gowri C. As the number of cases starts to decrease and more people get vaccinated, could this pill be an alternative to the vaccine? Or a cure to the virus besides the vaccine which is more preventive?

Background Information A new drug being developed by Ridgeback Biotherapeutics and Merck & Co. shows some promising results in the pill’s preliminary testing. When administered, the pill was able to significantly reduce the virus in the subject's systems within five days of treatment, according to Ridgeback’s reports on September 1st. What does this mean for the future? If the pill is able to treat people with Covid-19 and people with similar symptoms, the drug would be another treatment available for the virus. The way doctor’s have been treating patients with the virus was to hospitalize them and wait for the infectious disease to pass or give them an authorized dose of Remdesivir. Remdesivir was one of the first drugs proven to help fight the virus in doses. However, there weren’t a lot of outcomes with this method; people would pass away due to not being able to fight the virus, not be able to get the Remdesivir drug, put on a ventilator, or they were able to recover. Now, the way Coronavirus is being treated, is to vaccinate everyone; in an effort of preventive caution. If this drug is proven successful, not only will we have the vaccine to prevent the spread but also a way to treat infected patents. How does this new drug work and what is the effectiveness? Other Covid-19 drugs target the virus itself, trying to kill it off using the virus's own proteins and structure. This new drug, named Molnupiravir, targets the part of the virus that aids it in reproducing and spreading. Potentially, this drug not only could stop the virus from spreading in the body and treating it, but also slow the spread of the virus within people who have taken the pill before. The results of the second phase of testing of this pill have been quite promising. According to Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, their most recent study they conducted and reported on September 1 stated that subjects who had taken larger doses of the drug had lower levels of infectious virus than the placebo group after three days. Another promising result reported that tests, run on study volunteers who took the drug twice daily for five days, weren’t able to detect any disease in them. While 24% of the volunteers who hadn't taken the pill in the placebo group were detected with the virus after five days. With this new drug, trends of the Coronavirus could start to slow down, potentially putting a hopeful end to this situation everyone has experienced for the past year. Not only will there be prevention, but possibly a more effective treatment.

Sources:

• Covid-19 Pill Shows Promise in Preliminary Testing

• Merck gives an early peek at COVID-19 drug results