NEW YORK – A possible new drug to treat coronavirus-positive patients may be enough to turn the pandemic upside down, Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel revealed on Sunday “Fox & Friends Weekend. “
Experimental first stage test COVID-19 the pill called Molnupiravir, from Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, showed promising signs of effectiveness in reducing the virus in patients.
“It could be the Holy Grail in that because it was only studied in phase two of testing and it literally stopped the virus in its path,” he explained. “And no virus was found in the patients studied.”
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The drug would work as a five-day home treatment, similar to Tamiflu, to prevent the virus from reproducing before causing major damage. Siegel said the drug could hit the market in just four to five months.
The doctor said that although only 182 patients have been studied during the tests so far, the pill can still be “very promising” for thousands of people.
“This could be the future, once the vaccine really controls the pandemic and we start to see isolated cases,” he said. “At that time, this drug may be ready and this may be the drug for the next few months.”
Siegel predicted that the United States will be free of the coronavirus pandemic by the summer, making treatment with Molnupiravir “very useful” for the management of isolated cases.
“This is the first pill we have, something we can use in our arsenal against COVID as a drug,” he said.
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