Until recently, there were no oral treatments against the novel coronavirus. Molnupiravir, an oral antiviral from Merck (NYSE:MRK) and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, recently won approval in the United Kingdom and is poised to find use in other countries.
And Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) has now announced that its oral antiviral cut the risk of hospitalization or death by 89% in an interim analysis of the Phase 2/3 EPIC-HR trial.
Merck had announced that molnupiravir led to an approximately 50% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths versus placebo.
The Pfizer EPIC-HR trial study found that 0.8% of patients who received Paxlovid were hospitalized within 28 days. There were no deaths in the drug group. Conversely, 7% of placebo recipients were either hospitalized or died.
Based on feedback from the independent Data Monitoring Committee and FDA, Pfizer will stop enrollment in the study.
The company also plans on filing data from the trial with the FDA as part of its paperwork for emergency use authorization.
The drug also appeared to be well tolerated. Some 19% of Paxlovid recipients had adverse events while 21% of placebo recipients did. The majority of those events were mild.
“These data suggest that our oral antiviral candidate, if approved or authorized by regulatory authorities, has the potential to save patients’ lives, reduce the severity of COVID-19 infections, and eliminate up to nine out of ten hospitalizations,” noted Albert Bourla, Pfizer CEO, in a statement.
Paxlovid is a SARS-CoV-2-3CL protease inhibitor, while molnupiravir is a ribonucleoside analog.
PFE shares jumped 10.86% to $48.61, which is an all-time high for the stock. Meanwhile, MRK shares fell 9.86% to $81.61.