JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – There’s now another treatment option for COVID-19.
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday authorized Merck’s pill against COVID-19.
On Wednesday, the agency gave the OK to Pfizer’s pill, which is said to be more effective.
Medical experts say the pills can’t come soon enough. For more than a year, monoclonal antibody treatments have been the only option when treating COVID-19.
UF Health Jacksonville director of infectious disease Chad Neilsen explained the pills approved this week are the first treatment option that doesn’t require a shot or IV.
“By providing pills through prescription form, we could send people home from our emergency department with a prescription for a COVID treatment which we haven’t been able to do before,” Neilsen said.
The Biden administration has already secured 3.1 million doses of Merck’s pill — far less than the 10 million courses the government bought from Pfizer.
That’s because Merck’s drug is far less effective than Pfizer’s. Merk’s data cut the risk of hospitalization or death by 30%, and the drug label warned of serious safety issues, including the potential for birth defects.
Pfizer’s pill is almost 90% effective at preventing hospitalization or death and is standing up against the omicron variant.
This is especially important now.
“We’re starting to see literature pile up, saying that the monoclonal antibody treatments we used throughout the pandemic for alpha and delta waves may not be as successful at treating the omicron variant,” Neilsen said. “So it’s extremely important that these Pfizer and Merck pills are soon to hit market because they may be one of our only treatment options moving forward.”
And until these pills become available, treatment is tricky. That’s because when you take a test, it doesn’t tell you what variant you have — it just says whether you are positive or negative. So doctors, at this point, just have to assume you have omicron.
“So when it comes to treating antibodies, we have to leave it up to our local physicians to decide how they want to handle that,” Neilsen said.
Neilsen says this should be another reason for unvaccinated people to get vaccinated.
“With potentially a failing treatment that we’re still researching with the monoclonal antibodies, it could put certain people in certain risk categories if they’re not vaccinated into even more severe risks,” Neilsen said.
And Neilsen says that while there is hope with these antiviral pills, it will likely be weeks before the treatment hits pharmacies, and even then, supplies will be limited.