London, UK: A recent research found that an oral antiviral pill for COVID speeds up recovery among vaccinated yet vulnerable patients, but does not reduce their likelihood of needing hospital care or dying.

The UK became the first nation in the world to approve molnupiravir for the treatment of COVID in November 2021. A study that revealed the antiviral lowered the risk of hospitalization or death in high-risk, unvaccinated people at the time raised expectations. However, soon after the medicine was approved, additional research, carried out when the Delta variation predominated, revealed the treatment had a lesser impact than initially thought.

According to new research published in the Lancet, molnupiravir does not lower the risk of hospitalization or death among vaccinated, high-risk individuals exposed to the Omicron variant. Prof. Chris Butler, the co-chief investigator of the trial at the University of Oxford, suggested that there may still be situations in which the antiviral is helpful, in helping key workers get back to work quicker if systems are under high pressure.

“That’s a complex political decision which needs to be made, given the circumstances at the time,” Prof. Butler added.

Adults in the UK were eligible for the trial if they tested positive for COVID either by PCR or lateral flow test, were sick in the community and were either aged 50 or above or over the age of 18 with a health condition that made them vulnerable to COVID, as per the report.

The researchers recruited more than 25,700 eligible participants between 8th December 2021 and 27th April 2022, 94 percent of whom had received at least three doses of a COVID vaccine. Half of the participants were randomly allocated to receive usual care, while half were couriered a five-day course of molnupiravir.

According to the findings, which are based on a 28-day follow-up period, both groups experienced a similar rate of hospitalisations or fatalities, with such outcomes being recorded for 98 of the 12,525 participants who received usual care and for whom such data was available compared to 105 of the 12,529 participants who were also given molnupiravir.

The participants given molnupiravir reported a median recovery time of nine days compared with 15 days for those only receiving usual care, with further analysis suggesting molnupiravir sped up recovery by 4.2 days on average. Those given molnupiravir also had less contact with their GPs, and a higher rate of early, sustained recovery while fewer people in this group had virus detected after seven days, and their viral loads were lower.

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