Trials showed it halves the risk of people needing hospital treatment or dying. This medicine is also given twice daily to people who are at risk of severe illness but have not been hospitalised. Meanwhile, another antiviral called molnupiravir was approved yesterday in the UK. The results have not yet been fully published, but were announced today in a press release from Pfizer. The equivalent figures were 1 and 6.7 per cent for those who got treatment within five days. In a placebo-controlled trial of 1219 people from all over the world, 0.8 per cent of people who received Paxlovid within three days of a positive covid-19 test required hospital treatment, compared with 7 per cent of people who received a placebo. The second drug is called ritonavir developed as a treatment for HIV, it helps slow the breakdown of PF-07321332. Paxlovid, made by US firm Pfizer, is a combination of two drugs a compound currently called PF-07321332, which blocks activity of an enzyme that the coronavirus needs to replicate.
