Pfizer Drug Pfizer Inc.’s Paxlovid received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration in December, introducing the first Covid treatment taken in pill form.
Pfizer doesn’t have any long Covid studies underway, but is assessing their possibility, the drugmaker said in an email. Once antiviral products are fully approved, rather than authorized as most are now, researchers will have greater freedom to study them in combinations, said Carl Dieffenbach, director of the division of AIDS at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Dieffenbach is also co-leading an antiviral program to counter pandemic threats. Some scientists believe omicron and its subvariants evolved in a single patient suffering prolonged Covid infection.
Drugs that speed the elimination of such infections might reduce the risk that new immune-evading strains will emerge. SARS-CoV-2 is mostly transmitted via respiratory particles emitted from infected persons’ airways.