World¡¯s largest pharmaceutical company Pfizer is testing a potential treatment for Covid-19 and according to its CEO Albert Bourla, the experimental oral drug could be available by the end of the year.
Bourla told CNBC that clinical trials are underway for the pill that can be ingested orally at home to combat Covid-19 when illness is first detected. If that goes well and the Food and Drug Administration approves it, the drug could be distributed across the US by the end of the year, the report added.
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This comes after a Daily Telegraph report, which said that up to 60 volunteers, all clean-living adults aged between 18 and 60, are being given the antiviral drug at two Pfizer locations, one in the US and the other in Belgium.
Late last month, the company kicked off an early stage clinical trial of a new antiviral therapy for the disease. The antiviral drug, codenamed PF 07321332, is part of a class of medicines called protease inhibitors that bind to a viral enzyme and prevent the SARS-Cov-2 virus from replicating in the cell.
The same protease inhibitors helped turn the tide on the spread of other viral pathogens such as HIV and hepatitis C virus.
¡°Tackling the Covid-19 pandemic requires both prevention via vaccine and targeted treatment for those who contract the virus,¡± said Mikael Dolsten, Pfizer's chief scientific officer, in a statement.?
¡°Given the way that SARS-CoV-2 is mutating and the continued global impact of Covid-19, it appears likely that it will be critical to have access to therapeutic options both now and beyond the pandemic.¡±
Pfizer is testing two antivirals, one that is injected intravenously and another that is administered orally, but is currently focusing on the latter since it avoids taking a trip to the hospital.?
¡°Together, the two (oral and injected antivirals) have the potential to create an end to end treatment paradigm that complements vaccination in cases where disease still occurs,¡± Dolsten added.
Meanwhile, Bourla also asserted that impoverished countries get greater access to vaccines. ¡°In India, it¡¯s a horrible situation and also in other parts of the world where the penetration and availability of the vaccines is lower,¡± Bourla told CNBC in an interview.
¡°So, setting aside the moral issues, if we will not be able to provide solutions¡± for countries dealing with deadly outbreaks, such as India and Africa, those nations ¡°will become the pool where the virus will replicate and generate variants.¡±
The Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine has proved to be over 95 percent effective, but Israel is also examining dozens of cases where people experienced heart inflammation after taking a shot.