The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday granted emergency use authorization to Pfizer ’s COVID-19 treatment pill—coming about a month after the federal government …
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday granted emergency use authorization to Pfizer ’s COVID-19 treatment pill—coming about a month after the federal government announced it would purchase 10 million courses of the drug. The pill, Paxlovid, is taken twice per day for five days in combination with a second medicine called ritonavir, classified as a generic antiviral drug. The drug is aimed at helping patients who are suffering from “mild-to-moderate” COVID-19 from becoming so sick that they need to be hospitalized, officials and Pfizer have said. “Today’s authorization introduces the first treatment for COVID-19 that is in the form of a pill that is taken orally—a major step forward in the fight against this global pandemic,” Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said Wednesday in a news release about the agency’s approval. The drug, only available via a prescription, can be initiated as soon as possible following a positive diagnosis of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
