All About Paxlovid and Other Covid-19 Treatments

A pill that will help Covid-19 patients avert life-threatening illness has been something of a holy grail for doctors and drugmakers. The earliest therapeutics shown to help have typically been administered to patients via a transfusion or once they have become sick enough to require hospitalization. Two years after the first Covid cases were reported in China, the pill-based treatment Paxlovid emerged, offering a huge advance. Intended for newly infected patients at risk of developing severe disease, the medicine reduces hospitalizations and death and makes users less likely to spread the coronavirus. Research is ongoing to determine how well Paxlovid and other treatments perform against the omicron variant of the virus identified late last year.

Developed by Pfizer Inc., Paxlovid is a combination of two antiviral pills taken orally. One is designed to block the action of a key enzyme that the coronavirus uses to make copies of itself; the other, the HIV medication ritonavir, helps slow the breakdown of the first, enabling it to remain active in the body for longer and at higher concentrations. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared Paxlovid on Dec. 22 for emergency use. China on Feb. 11 granted emergency approval for Paxlovid, the first foreign pharmaceutical product specifically targeting Covid that it has endorsed.