Experts bank on 2 new pills to fight Omicron variant

PUNE: Soon-to-be-introduced oral-antivirals

molnupiravir

and paxlovid may prove a game-changer in the fight against SARS-CoV-2 and its new variants, such as Omicron, experts feel.


The drugs will especially be useful in countries like India where a sizeable population is fully or partly vaccinated or have hybrid immunity — natural infection and recovery followed by vaccination.

In the event of Omicron’s spread, most people, therefore, are likely to get only mild-to-moderate illness that can be easily treated at home with the new drugs.

While molnupiravir is awaiting emergency use authorization in India, the process to get paxlovid commercially available is being fasttracked in western countries and will soon be made available in India. If these drugs get authorized in the coming weeks, they could prove key treatment options for people with Covid-19 amid the Omicron concern, infectious diseases experts said.

“The ability to treat Covid-19 with an oral pill rather than an injection or infusion means more people can be treated faster,” said infectious diseases expert Dr Sanjay

Pujari

, member of the national Covid task force.



“Both the drugs have shown efficacy to reduce the risk of progression to severe disease or death amongst patients with mild illness and those with risk factors for progression,” he added.

Molnupiravir is approved in the UK and the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) advisory panel voted closely (13 to 10) in its favour. Similarly, following promising preliminary results of paxlovid, approval is being sought for emergency use authorization for the oral pill from the

USFDA

.

Although data on both the drugs’ effectiveness against Omicron is currently pending, both the antivirals are most likely to prove effective in treating infection from the new variant because of the mechanism they act on.

Omicron live updates

Mutations are more common in spike proteins. Omicron has a total of 32 mutations in the spike protein.

“In laboratory studies, molnupiravir has been shown to be effective against other variants like Alpha and Delta,” Dr Pujari said.

“Once authorized, these pills will allow patients to be treated earlier in the course of infection, at the point when antiviral drugs are more effective. By stopping the virus from growing in the body early on, the drugs can prevent the inflammation that causes severe Covid-19,” said Ahmedabad-based Dr Atul Patel, director (infectious diseases) at

Vedanta Institute of Medical Sciences

.

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