Pharmaceutical giant Merck announced significant positive results for their antiviral drug, Molnupiravir, to treat people experiencing mild to moderate symptoms of COVID-19.

Molnupiravir is deemed as the game-changing antiviral pill for COVID-19.

According to Merck’s Phase 3 Study, their oral antiviral drug reduced the risk of hospitalisation and death by around 50 percent.

If this turns out to be correct it really could be a game changer for everyone.

The effects of COVID vary between hosts. For some, the virus progresses slowly while others get the worst of it in lesser time.

That’s where Molnupiravir comes in; its main goal is to help prevent people getting sicker so they can recover faster.

People who are newly infected or symptomatic begin taking the drug a few days after symptoms arise to help calm down the effects, similar to the flu.

However, what effects will this drug have in the long run?

Unfortunately, as people have only been taking these pills for a short amount of time, we don’t really know.

But if the pills help people recover quicker and also prevent long COVID — that is a game-changer.

The UK is one of the first countries to give it the green light and renamed it Lagevrio, meaning it is now the first COVID-19 treatment that can be administered by mouth.

Ease of delivery and storage makes it ideal in a situation where there can be considerable delay in symptom onset and confirmatory testing of COVID-19.

Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has approved the pill for use for those who have a mild to moderate case of the disease, and at least one risk factor for developing serious illness, including older age, obesity, diabetes, mellitus or heart disease.

The pill works by helping to stop the virus from replicating, which is part of what causes the symptoms.

This medication helps to keep the virus levels in your body down and therefore reduce the severity and impact of the disease.

Even with this pill released in the UK, the pressure is still on the government to reinitiate a plan B, which is aimed at protecting the NHS from unsustainable demands, involving mask mandates, vaccine passes and work-from-home orders.

That would be huge step backwards again but is it worth it just to keep safe with mortalities on the rise again?

What do you think?

Photo by Michael Longmire on Unsplash

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