KABUL (Pajhwok): Health experts say the pills developed by Merck, a US drug company, for treatment of coronavirus would be a big advance in controlling the pandemic if the drug is approved.
Pharmaceutical giant Merck recently in a statement said that initial results from the clinical experiments of antiviral drug showed that the medicine can help reduce the risk of hospitalization and death in half for people infected with Covid-19.
The drug, Molnupiravir ,is an experimental antiviral drug which is orally active and was developed for the treatment of influenza. It is a prodrug of the synthetic nucleoside derivative N4-hydroxycytidine, and exerts its antiviral action through introduction of copying errors during viral RNA replication.
This drug is not used by other health specialists so far.
Medical experts:
Raz Mohammad Shirzad, former advisor to the Ministry of Public Health, termed the new medicine as promising and told Pajhwok Afghan News that it would be the first drug in tablet form to treat coronavirus if authorized for use.
The drug is a huge advance in controlling the coronavirus pandemic and it would be the first of its kind to be used by patients at home who are under risk, he said.
He said that officials of Merck and partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics said they plan to seek US emergency use authorization for the pill as soon as possible and to make regulatory applications worldwide.
About the efficiency of the drug, he said that an initial analysis of 775 patients in Merck’s study looked at hospitalizations or deaths among people at risk for severe disease.
It found that 7.3% of those given molnupiravir twice a day for five days were hospitalized and none had died by 29 days after treatment. That compared with a hospitalization rate of 14.1% for placebo patients. There were also eight deaths in the placebo group.
He said that when the drug reduced 50 percent of hospitalization or death, it was a significant clinical impact.
About the side effects of the drug, he said that the company so far published a limited information about the side effects of the medicine and there was need for more research on the regard.
In response to a question whether it would be acceptable for other countries if the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the medicine, he said, that the US and other countries believed in the organization would also accept the medicine.
However, he said that World Health Organization, European Union, Britain, Russia and other countries had their own similar organizations who could decide the medicine based on their own research.
Other drugs such as Dexamethasone are also used for patients in severe condition in hospitals and it rescues the lives of many, he said.
Some other health professionals also say that molnupiravir would be a great advance in the medical sector if it was proved effective.
WHO earlier had said that currently six types of medicine are used for treatment of coronavirus; but none of them yielded expected results.
Merck
Merck is the first drug company which published its results about experiment of its drug for treating Covid-19, but other drug companies also work on developing similar medicines.
Pfizer company is also recently working on the finalization of two drugs for the treatment of the virus. A Swiss company, Roche is also researching about creating a similar drug.
Merck said that it expects to produce 10 million courses of the treatment by the end of 2021.
The US government has confirmed that it would purchase medicine from the company worth $1.2 billion if the drug approved.
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