For once, Pfiz­er's Covid pill fails in a tri­al — but on­ly af­ter seek­ing a much broad­er pop­u­la­tion

Pfiz­er’s Covid-19 pill, which has boast­ed over­whelm­ing­ly strong da­ta in pro­tect­ing cer­tain high-risk peo­ple with Covid-19 from end­ing up in the hos­pi­tal or dy­ing, now has at least one mi­nor weak­ness.

The com­pa­ny re­port­ed last Fri­day that in a tri­al of al­most 3,000 adults in the post-Covid-19 ex­po­sure pro­phy­lax­is space — those en­rolled in the tri­al at the peak of the Omi­cron wave who had a neg­a­tive rapid test but were asymp­to­matic house­hold con­tacts with ex­po­sure with­in 4 days to an in­di­vid­ual who was symp­to­matic and re­cent­ly test­ed pos­i­tive, when com­pared to place­bo — Pfiz­er ob­served not sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant risk re­duc­tions of 32% for those re­ceiv­ing Paxlovid for 5 days, and 37% in adults who re­ceived Paxlovid for 10 days to pre­vent in­fec­tion.

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