(Photo courtesy Pfizer)

FDA au­tho­rizes the first at-home pills from Pfiz­er to treat Covid-19

The FDA on Wednes­day signed off on Pfiz­er’s Covid-19 pills, which are meant to help keep peo­ple out of the hos­pi­tal.

The news comes at a cru­cial mo­ment, as the Omi­cron vari­ant has tak­en over Delta as the promi­nent strain in the US, and as mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body in­fu­sions will like­ly be in very short sup­ply as two of the three cur­rent­ly mar­ket­ed are in­ef­fec­tive against Omi­cron.

Pfiz­er will see ear­ly sup­ply con­straints of their pills, which are made up of nir­ma­trelvir tablets and ri­ton­avir tablets, co-pack­aged for oral use, mean­ing doc­tors will have to be very care­ful on how they’re doled out. And if Mer­ck’s pill is au­tho­rized soon too, there may be more op­tions, al­though there’s al­so a dras­tic dif­fer­ence in ef­fi­ca­cy be­tween the two.

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