The problem I see is whether people get tested early enough for this to be effective. So you have five days after testing positive, but what if you don’t get tested positive until after you’ve been sick for awhile and decide to go see if it’s covid and not just a cold.
As an aside I got very sick with the flu a few years back and ended up in the hospital. I was given tamiflu after diagnosis but before hospitalization and it did nothing. The doctors said I had waited to long for my first visit to the doctor. I think this is common- you assume whatever you have will pass and when you finally realize it isn’t going away or it gets worse, it’s too late for the early treatments.
I totally agree, me29, that there will be people who will miss the window. But I think a lot of people are more nervous about the ramifications of covid vs the flu, and may act quicker. Time will tell! Merck expects this will likely be available to the public before the end of the year, pending approval. And having 5 days after symptoms, with the increasing availability of cheap rapid tests is a pretty decent amount of time to confirm you have covid and get a prescription for this medication to be effective. Hopefully this proves to be yet another useful tool in our arsenal.
(PS sorry about your flu experience, that sounds terrible!)
I can’t access the article but wonder if the pill has to be taken 5 days after a positive test, 5 days after onset of symptoms or 5 days after exposure. Since COVID takes a few days to exhibit symptoms after infection, this seems important.
I imagine, since monoclonal antibodies are being used instead of vaccine that the same folks may rely on this. A 50% reduction is great but less than the vaccines. at least for the duration of vaccine effectiveness so far studied.
If it ends up being like Tamiflu it will be a great tool. I worked a number of years in long term care. All our patients got the flu shot. And then if one got the flu we would treat them with Tamiflu and give the rest of that floor Tamiflu prophylaxis.
Any news of something working is good news to me. Nothing will change the super resistant (to the vax), so I don’t worry about them at this point. If it helps them, great. If not, they made their choice. But if this can help those who either can’t get the vax or who get the rare bad breakthrough case, that’s awesome. It definitely sounds easier than MAb and likely cheaper - though I don’t know if they will try both with the same person.
Yes, I have a lot of the same sentiments, but if it cuts hospitalizations, it also helps our hospital workers, which is awesome.
From reading a bit more, the current way they are talking about using this pill is basically for the same group who are eligible to get monoclonal antibody infusions. This pill is LESS effective than the infusions (it looks like it cut hospitalizations by 50% and prevented all deaths in the group that received it vs. control, whereas monoclonal antibodies cut hospitalizations more like 70-80%). However, it is much cheaper than the infusions (about $700 per course at this point vs approximately $2000 for monoclonal antibodies). And obviously much easier/less daunting perhaps for some people to take the pills vs going to a hospital for infusions. So clearly there will be a place for this in our fight, but it’s not a perfect solution. And certainly down the road in countries & places where the availability of infusion centers isn’t really likely, this could be a real game changer, too. I believe they are also investigating broader application of this beyond just the very high risk population,too.
I do think the fact that it was effective if started up to 5 days after the onset of symptoms is a pretty generous window of opportunity to use this, very helpful.
Regarding your previous question about the vaccine hesitant possibly thinking of this drug as an alternative, that may not be too likely, since the vaccine hesitant tend to downplay the seriousness of COVID-19, so they may not rush to get tested or get treatment if they get it. Also, if they turned down a $0 cost to them vaccine, they may not want to spend $700 or their insurance deductible (if they have insurance) on the drug.
The most COVID-19 concerned are likely to be the quickest to test and seek the drug if they get COVID-19. Of course, they also tend to be vaccinated, so that would only be for breakthrough cases, which are less likely than unvaccinated cases per person.
I’m not absolutely sure, but the interviews I saw imply this will be very simple and similar to Tamiflu, and so it is reasonable to think the plan is this could be filled at your pharmacy and paid by your insurance (although who knows if during this crisis phase, the government may be picking up the tab? Like some early testing costs, etc? I saw the US government placed a $1.7B order for the drug. But it would definitely seem the process for acquiring these pills will be very simple.
Though the pharmacy would have to implement outside delivery if it did not want known COVID-19 patients entering the building to pick up the COVID-19 drug.
Well yes, lots of pharmacies have drive-throughs, but when someone in my family is sick with a contagious illness, usually I go pick their scripts up for them on their behalf; I also am frequently picking up scripts for my father-in-law and mother. I imagine there are ways for this to be done. CVS and other national chains do delivery, too. Theoretically, I’m not sure why it would be different from picking up Tamiflu…I imagine no one wants to be close to strangers with known flu, either. But I’m not claiming to be privy to how this will work; it just seems very do-able to me.
Agree—have sent loved ones to pick up Tamiflu when I was I’ll with suspected flu. It was like a miracle for me, who my MD relative swears it doesn’t work that well or that fast.
Well yes, so I’m already vaccinated of course. But if I was to have a breakthrough case with symptoms, I would definitely run to ADDITIONALLY get either monoclonal antibodies or these anti-viral pills to reduce the chance of a bad breakthrough if I had the types of underlying conditions that might give that a decent chance of happening. It doesn’t have to be EITHER vaccination OR antiviral treatment.
It does not have to be, agree. Unfortunately, so many would skip the vaccination and opt for a pill. Which may or may not keep them out of the hospital. Just like the unvaccinated folks rushing in to get a monoclonal Ab infusion…
Was it the Tamiflu, that doesn’t work that quickly or that well, on average, or was it just you healing very well? That’s the problem with n=1 anecdotal reports.
Look at Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, Vitamin C, Zinc, Vitamin D, or whatever other COVID miracle cure that medicine is reported to be ignoring. People take it and survive and they credit the treatment. The truth is, by the law of averages, EVERYONE is expected to survive COVID, even overweight, diabetic, octogenarians. When a mortality rate is 20%, which is mortifyingly high, the survival rate is 80%. I’m not trivializing COVID mortality, and very much so not writing off the morbidity, but hold a feather in your trunk and odds are in your favor you’ll survive. It’s why we do randomized, double blind, placebo controlled trials, so we aren’t fooled by anecdote.
