Covid-19: the Merck laboratory requests an authorization to market an oral treatment – franceinfo

The American laboratory Merck will request a marketing authorization from the American Medicines Agency (FDA) for oral treatment against Covid-19, announces the company (in English) Friday October 1. If approved, molnupiravir will be the first such drug to be marketed to treat Covid-19.

Merck says its drug, developed with biotechnology company Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, can cut hospitalization and death risks in half. During the phase 3 clinical trial involving 775 people, the rate of hospitalization or death in patients who received the drug was 7.3%, compared with 14.1% in those who received a placebo. The treatment lasted five days.

Because of these encouraging results, Merck says it stopped its clinical trial earlier than planned, on the recommendation of an independent data monitoring committee and in consultation with the FDA. The full data, however, has not yet been released and will need to be analyzed by independent experts.

Antivirals prevent the virus from replicating itself. Their application can be twofold: to allow people already affected not to suffer from serious symptoms, but also to those who have been in close contact not to develop it. This type of treatment with tablets, easy to administer, is eagerly awaited and seen as an effective way to fight the pandemic. For the moment, no antiviral drug has been very convincing against Covid-19.

Other laboratories are trying to develop antivirals in tablet form, such as the biotech Atea Pharmaceuticals and the Roche laboratory, which are studying the effectiveness of a treatment called AT-527. The Pfizer laboratory says it has started a large clinical trial for its own pill, to test its ability to preventively reduce the risk of infection in those around a sick person. It will be administered in combination with a “low dose” the medicine ritonavir, used against the AIDS virus.