COVID Pill Shows 90% Efficacy, Works Against Omicron Too: Pfizer

The Pfizer pill has a five-day regimen, and is consumed with an older antiviral, ritonavir.

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According to a final analysis, Pfizer's antiviral COVID-19 pill displayed 90 percent efficacy against hospitalisations and deaths in high-risk patients.

The oral medicine also showed effectiveness against the Omicron variant, the US-based pharmaceutical major said, on the basis of lab data, on Tuesday, 14 December.

Reuters reported that in an interview, Pfizer Chief Scientific Officer Mikael Dolsten spoke about the findings, and said, "We're talking about a staggering number of lives saved and hospitalisations prevented. And of course, if you deploy this quickly after infection, we are likely to reduce transmission dramatically."

The Pfizer pills are consumed for five days with an older antiviral, ritonavir, with a gap of 12 hours, soon after the emergence of symptoms.

What Interim Results Had Indicated

Last month, Pfizer Inc had released the interim results of its 2/3 clinical trials, which involved a total of 1,881 participants. Nineteen percent of the participants were administered the antiviral treatment, and 21 percent were given a placebo.

The study found that the antiviral pill reduced the risk of hospitalisation and death in patients by 89 percent.

Additionally, nobody in the trial who received the Pfizer pill died, compared to the 12 casualties among those who were administered the placebo.

On Tuesday, the data included an additional 1,000 people, Reuters reported.

Pfizer also put out early data from a second clinical trial which showed that the treatment decreased hospitalisations by around 70 percent in around 600 standard-risk adults, according to Reuters.

(With inputs from Reuters.)