Britain granted conditional authorization on Thursday to the first pill shown to successfully treat COVID-19 as of now. Britain is also the first country to OK the treatment from drugmaker Merck, although it wasn’t immediately clear how quickly the pill would be available.
The pill was licensed for adults 18 and older who have tested positive for COVID-19 and have at least one risk factor for developing severe symptoms, such as obesity or heart disease. Patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 would take four pills of the drug, known as molnupiravir, twice a day for five days.
An antiviral pill that reduces symptoms and accelerates recovery could prove essential, easing caseloads on hospitals and helping curb outbreaks in countries with fragile health systems. A reactive pill could also strengthen the two-pronged approach to the pandemic: treatment, by way of medication, and prevention, primarily through vaccinations.
Molnupiravir is pending review with regulators in the US, the European Union, and elsewhere with strong initial results. The US Food and Drug Administration announced last month it would convene a panel of independent experts to scrutinize the safety and effectiveness of the pill in late November.
Merck announced preliminary results in September showing its drug cut hospitalizations and deaths by half among patients with early COVID-19 symptoms. The results haven’t yet been peer reviewed or published in a scientific journal.
The drug targets an enzyme the coronavirus uses to reproduce itself, inserting errors into its genetic code that slow its ability to spread and take over human cells. That genetic activity has led some independent experts to question whether the drug could potentially cause mutations leading to birth defects or tumors.
Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said molnupiravir’s ability to interact with DNA and cause mutations had been studied “extensively” and that it wasn’t found to pose a risk to humans.