Pfizer’s new at-home drug for Covid-19 could be available by the year-end

April 29, 2021: -Pfizer’s experimental oral drug to treat Covid-19 at the first sign of illness could be available by this year-end, CEO Albert Bourla told CNBC on Tuesday.

The company that developed the first authorized Covid-19 vaccine in the U.S. with German drugmaker BioNTech started in March an early-stage clinical trial that tested a new antiviral therapy for treating the disease.

The drug is a class of protease inhibitors and works by inhibiting an enzyme that the virus should replicate in human cells.

Protease inhibitors are also used to treat other viral pathogens like HIV and hepatitis C.

If clinical trials are successful and the Food and Drug Administration approves it, the drug could be distributed all around the U.S. by the year-end, Bourla told CNBC.

Health experts say the drug, taken by mouth, could be a game-changer because people who are infected with the virus recently could use it outside of hospitals.

Researchers are hoping that this can lower the hospital trips, and the medication will keep the disease from increasing.

In addition to the drug, Pfizer is still testing its vaccine in 6-month to 11-year-old children. Vaccinating children is crucial to ending the coronavirus pandemic, according to public health officials and infectious disease experts.

Earlier this month, the company asked the FDA to expand its vaccine authorization to adolescents ages 12 to 15 after the dose was 100% effective in a study. Bourla is “very optimistic” that the FDA will approve the use of the shot in adolescents, he told CNBC on Tuesday.