The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has approved Pfizer’s oral COVID-19 treatment drug called Paxlovid.
The MHRA has urged the public in an official statement to use the Paxlovid pill at the onset of the symptoms of COVID-19 because it is most effective in the first five days of a positive diagnosis.
The development comes as the UK grapples with resurging cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
On the last day of 2021, the country reported nearly 190,000 cases, its highest in a single day since the beginning of the pandemic.
Pfizer had published preliminary results of the highly anticipated clinical trials of Paxlovid in November last year, revealing that the drug reduces the rate of hospitalization and death by 89 percent in high-risk adults.
Pfizer’s pill is not the first to be approved in the UK, Merck’s MHRA-approved oral pill Molnupiravir is the world’s first oral COVID-19 treatment drug that received regulatory approval in November. It reduces the risk of hospitalization and death by more than 50 percent among high-risk patients with mild or moderate coronavirus infections.
Public health officials around the world believe that easy-to-administer antiviral coronavirus pills can play an important role in ending the pandemic as they will prevent patients with mild and moderate symptoms from developing severe infections.
