Pharmaceutical megacorporation pfizer is now developing a COVID pill that is meant to be taken alongside the COVID vaccines that have already made the company a staggering amount of money. The new pill is expected to be released by the end of the year and will be required to be taken twice per day.
“Success against #COVID19 will likely require both vaccines & treatments,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said on Wednesday. “We’re pleased to share we’ve started a Phase 2/3 study of our oral antiviral candidate-specifically designed to combat SARS-CoV-2-in non-hospitalized, low-risk adults.”
Pfizer also put out a press release the same week that proclaimed, “If successful, [the drug] has the potential to address a significant unmet medical need, providing patients with a novel oral therapy that could be prescribed at the first sign of infection, without requiring hospitalization.” The company described the drug as an “investigational orally administered protease inhibitor antiviral therapy designed specifically to combat COVID–19 – in non–hospitalized, symptomatic adult participants who have a confirmed diagnosis of SARS–CoV–2 infection and are not at increased risk of progressing to severe illness, which may lead to hospitalization or death.”
Media corporations have already expressed excitement about the new pill, and Pfizer is so confident that the pill will be swiftly approved and mandated by governments that it has already started a production line before the end of clinical trials.
Other companies are also hard at work on COVID pills to be taken indefinitely while governments and media corporations focus on COVID.
In Singapore, a 16-year-old boy was ruled to be eligible for a $225,000 settlement this week after suffering a myocarditis cardiac arrest event that doctors ruled was likely in response to receiving his first dose of the Pfizer BionTech vaccine, with the Ministry of Health stating, “The myocarditis was likely a serious adverse event arising from the COVID-19 vaccine he received, which might have been aggravated by his strenuous lifting of weights and his high consumption of caffeine through energy drinks and supplements.”