DT News - India - ‘Paxlovid’ pill gets FDA approval for home COVID treatment

Dr. Rajeev Chitguppi

Thu. 23 December 2021

save

The Pfizer pill has demonstrated a nearly 90% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths among high-risk patients vulnerable to get severe disease.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized Paxlovid for adults with a positive COVID-19 test, who are showing early symptoms and are facing the highest hospitalization risks.

The high-risk population includes:

older people
obese individuals
those with comorbidities, like heart disease.

The drug is also authorized for children over 12 years of age provided they weigh at least 88 pounds (40 kg).

Paxlovid is not recommended for patients with severe kidney or liver problems.

Pfizer conducted a study that involved 2,246 Covid patients who were at high risk of developing more severe disease owing to risk factors, e.g. age > 65 years, overweight/ obese, or cardiovascular disease.

The randomized controlled trial showed that in the test group who received Paxlovid within five days of developing symptoms, only 0.8% of the total recipients were hospitalized. Whereas the placebo group had 6.3% hospitalizations. These numbers mean an 89% reduction in the hospitalization risk.

No patients in the test group (Paxlovid) died, whereas the placebo group showed 12 deaths.

To post a reply please login or register

"Feluda"- CRISPR based high accuracy, low cost Covid-19 test gets DCGI approval for commercial use

CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) test - FELUDA, received regulatory approvals on 19 September 2020 from the Drug ...

Johnson & Johnson single-shot COVID-19 vaccine receives FDA approval

A key advisory group of the Food and Drug Administration experts, known as the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, has ...

UK dental world reacts to COVID-19 vaccine approval

LONDON, UK: The UK has become the first country in the world to approve a clinically tested COVID-19 vaccine after the Medicines and Healthcare products ...

Indian Orthodontic Society campaigns against at-home aligner treatment

CHENNAI, India: The Indian Orthodontic Society (IOS) has submitted a complaint about direct-to-consumer (D2C) clear aligner therapy to the country’s ...

Nanorobots will prevent root canal treatment failures

An indigenously developed nanorobotic technology will deploy nanosized robots that will traverse the slender dentinal tubules and target the hard-to-reach ...

Will COVID-19 vaccines work in obese people? Or will they be just less effective in them?

This editorial describes all the major studies done from 1985 until 2020 and describes the mechanisms by which the body may reduce the effectiveness of a ...

US FDA grants Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the antiviral drug Remdesivir to treat COVID-19

The US Food and Drug Administration has granted 'Emergency Use Authorization (EUA)' for Gilead Sciences’ antiviral drug remdesivir to treat COVID-19, the ...

WHO rejects remdesivir for COVID-19

The World Health Organization (WHO) panel, in its latest statement, has recommended against the use of the remdesivir, an antiviral drug, in hospitalized ...

Artificial intelligence will relieve stress for dentists

“I hate the dentist” is an all-too-common refrain from patients. This is to be expected when, according to some studies, as many as 60% experience ...

Historic world first approval: CRISPR to treat genetic diseases

In a groundbreaking move, the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has approved the use of CRISPR gene editing technology to treat ...

Education

Live webinar
Mon. 15 September 2025
10:30 pm IST (New Delhi)